New Orleans on the Katrina Anniversary (Video!)

Thanks for finding the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund on the Katrina Anniversary. This is Ian Hunter's New Orleans video to share:



Here is our Huffington Post Blog for the Anti-Versary (click logo):



And we appreciate all ReDefine Downloads:

Vote Early, Vote Often for New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund

We're in the final three! You can vote daily from now though Friday for the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund in the MySpace Impact Awards, Community Building category. Reposting this badge and the blurb on MySpace would be a great help. The other two finalists have hundreds of thousands of myspace friends so NOMRF is a long shot but hopeful.

Individuals have helped keep this grass roots Fund alive for almost two years, and that has helped displaced New Orleans musicians.

(Click Icon Below to Vote)

Dr. John Entertainment Weekly Quote - Mac's Got Our Back!

"I'm very grateful to the people at the New Orleans Clinic and the New Orleans Musicians' Relief Fund. It's small organizations - they've done more than these big organizations with a lot of money."

Thanks Dr. John! You can see what all the fuss is about because the new Entertainment Weekly issue has hit the stands.

We offer his "Wade IV - The Aftermath" as a (Download) at (NOMRF.org) for .99 to help musicians still far from home.

Earl Turbinton, Eluard Burke; John Thompson, Oliver Morgan, and Issachar Gordon Rest in Peace

A woman gave her baby away near New Orleans last week. She handed it over to an officer in a fast food restaurant and walked away crying. That's legal now. We're becoming more Moses than Job.

Earl Turbinton, Eluard Burke; John Thompson, Oliver Morgan, and Issachar Gordon all died this week. Look them up. New Orleans legends are slipping away like mercury, and many still not home.

Jazz singer Timothea Beckerman used to call me from Long Island and not just ask for help, she needed a companion on the phone. Dr. John's phone number had washed away in the storm. Timothea was worried that friends would think she didn't want to go back. She died before getting the chance to prove how badly she missed home. I told her she would be okay . . .

Full Blog At: (Huffington Post)

* NOMRF (LINK)

Say You're a New Orleans Musician

Say you're a New Orleans musician. You haven't been able to move back to the city where you had a fan base built up for years before the levees broke. For almost two years your return has been delayed as your family debates your children's education, safety, health care, the rising cost of rent, whether your bandmates are back, how much of your equipment you've been able to replace – the list is endless.

Donor fatigue is setting in, Americans gave $7 billion in 2005 and $1 billion in 2006. You're not home so you qualify for help from fewer agencies. You come for weekend gigs when the car is in good shape, you can afford the gas and there's a friend's couch to stay on. Half the couches in New Orleans are still gone. You're trying to get to know the new music scene from halfway across the country. You're not a kid anymore and it's hard to establish a second life.

The New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund has a special understanding of displaced musicians, being founded by and for displaced musicians. These are stories we hear every day. Our board member Rickie Castrillo, voice of Tipitina's for decades, evacuated to Birmingham and sometimes plays with Taylor Hicks' old band. He's now moving on to North Carolina and is looking for a permanent home, like the rest of us.

NOMRF.ORG is an independent nonprofit, not a referral agency, so your donation will go to a displaced New Orleans musician instead of going to another fund or business. Most musicians have waited long enough for the help. We welcome yours.

When the Saints Go Marchin' Out

From The Economist
June 28th

As gigs have become more frequent, musicians have begun trickling back, but many still have mailing addresses elsewhere; the clubs have been rebuilt, but their houses remain ruined. The Soul Rebels Brass Band, a younger ensemble that incorporates funk, R&B and hip-hop into the Dixieland tradition, is now based in Houston. Only two of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band's eight members have returned to the Gentilly neighbourhood, where most of the band lived before the hurricane.

And two years after the hurricane, donor fatigue is setting in. The New Orleans Musicians' Relief Fund (NOMRF), another organisation that helps displaced musicians, is preparing to release an album for the two-year “anti-versary” in August. The album will be called “Redefine 8/29”, referring to the day New Orleans was evacuated. Jeff Beninato, the musician who founded NOMRF, says that the title could not refer directly to the hurricane. “If they hear Katrina, they'll think, ‘I don't want to hear that; that's old news.’”

But spare a thought for that most iconic of New Orleans institutions, the funeral with music. A brass band playing sombre dirges leads the mourners and the body tearfully through the streets, from church to cemetery. The body goes into the ground, and the tone changes: the music becomes upbeat, and the mourners turn to revellers, celebrating the life of the departed. Neither Dixieland nor New Orleans is yet a corpse, of course, but nowhere else is quite as adept at wringing joy from tragedy.

My Jaguar Alarm Clock

Yesterday I woke up to the metallic sound of a 15-year-old crashing a carjacked Jaguar just feet from our door.

The kid and his passenger sped past a nearby grade school and panicked when they saw a uniformed police captain leaving for work. Then they ricocheted into a series of cars, finally rolling into the one in front of our apartment. A neighbor friend and my husband ran outside to help as the officer waited for backup. The passenger got away, but the driver was booked on charges including driving without a license, resisting arrest, battery, hit and run, possession of a stolen car and reckless driving.

The Jaguar's owner told me that he was driving down St. Bernard Avenue when another driver blocked his car from a side street, then approached his vehicle and told him at gunpoint, "Give me your car or I'll kill you." A day later, he got the call about his car. Waiting for the tow-truck, he was visibly shaken as his mother waited with him.

Neighbors started to gather, like they do after a crisis. Some of their cars were blocked by the Jag. One man said his car had already been stolen twice and hit and run twice, so hopefully it's totaled and he can start over. A concerned parent walked down the street from the school and said he's heard about expanding violence and children being robbed near the playground. I hope that's only an urban legend.

This season, the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund is here as the music community puts its best festival foot forward. Crime has to be deterred so tourists will come back and fill the clubs. The clubs have to stay open so musicians who are home don't have to move away again. The music is what brings in the tourists. And that's the vicious cycle.

I last came back to town during the uptown tornadoes, and before that it was during the explosion of violence over the holidays. One of our neighbors down here wondered aloud if we're were bringing the bad luck down with us. But I'm still feeling lucky with this particular near-miss.

This 15-year-old was not carrying a gun.

11-Year-Old Jake Produces Great New Orleans Video

This is by a slideshow by Jake. He's 11 and for his 11th birthday asked for $11 donations to the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund instead of replacing the train he lost to Katrina because that's the kind of kid he is. So we gave him a link on nomrf.org and a tee shirt.

In his free time, Jake collects toys for New Orleans children in the hospital because he's thankful for the hospital's care when he was younger. In the slideshow he made to commemorate New Orleans, Jake uses a song by Liverpool musician Joe Topping who walked from Chicago to New Orleans in support of NOMRF's efforts for displaced musicians.

After one week of trumpet lessons, Jake was right there to play trumpet for Joe's second line welcome along with the New Wave Brass Band, the Voodoo Vixens and his mom, Jo. We all second-lined for Joe who walked for three months in the sweltering heat discussing New Orleans with everyone he encountered while wearing his guitar case on his back. The heavy kind. His song in the video is "How High."

With supporters like Jake and Joe, New Orleans should have a good long stay above the bubble in the world's consciousness.

Dr. John on NOLA's Music, Politics and Charity

Reprinted by STEVE WHITWORTH
For The Telegraph

Jelly Roll Morton. Louis Armstrong. Fats Domino. Pete Fountain. Al Hirt. The Neville Brothers.

If New Orleans is the birthplace of American music, then Dr. John is perhaps the leading conservator of that seminal tradition.

But even though he's a piano virtuoso, don't mistake the good doctor for some stuffy highbrow. After all, one of the many nicknames for New Orleans is "The City That Care Forgot."

"We play wherever they are all over the world," Dr. John said in a recent telephone interview. "If they hire us, we're there.

"We try to do the best we can to represent our hometown. We try to bring the people in to have a good time."

Indeed, Dr. John is just the latest in a long line of legendary musicians from the Crescent City who put the "good times" in that quintessential New Orleans expression: "Laissez les bon temps rouler." That means "Let the good times roll" for you non-French speakers.

And from the fabled city at the mouth of the mighty Mississippi River, Dr. John will appear some 1,300 miles upstream this weekend when he plays two sold-out shows Friday and Saturday nights at the Argosy Casino.

Dr. John is the stage name of Malcolm John "Mac" Rebennack Jr., born in New Orleans in 1940. He began his career as a session musician in New Orleans in the 1950s under that name, usually playing guitar. But after a shooting incident injured one of his fingers, he switched to piano, learning under the tutelage of one of the city's greatest players, the late Professor Longhair.

Starting in the late 1960s and into the 1970s, Dr. John adopted his stage name and crafted the persona of "The Night Tripper," blending voodoo references with elaborate costumes and psychedelic influences. He perhaps is best known for his 1973 hit, "Right Place, Wrong Time."

As he has aged, his onstage persona has mellowed, but he remains true to the mission of the New Orleans sound.

"The music makes me feel good, and it's my job to make the people feel good," he said. "We wanna get up and dance and have a good time. If we get the people dancing and having a good time, we've done our job all right. If we don't do that, we're the ones that messed up. That's how we look at it."

When Dr. John says "we," he's referring to his longtime backing band, which includes Herman "Roscoe" Ernest III on drums and percussion, David Barard on bass and John Fohl on guitar.

"It's the same backing band I've had for a gang-and-a-half of years," Dr. John said in his trademark raspy New Orleans drawl. "Herman and David have been with me from the lower 9th Ward. John is the new guy in the band; he's been with us for five or six years.

"It's a funky band. We have a good time. We play anything. We don't just play the hits. Every night, I play different shows."

In fact, Dr. John says the band has a book with 191 songs it can play on any given night. As the interview was taking place, he was picking out the songs for that night's show in Trenton, N.J.

"I'm writing the set list for tonight. The set list is Number 141, then up to Number 174, then Number 2, Number 7, Number 11. It makes it a shorter method for the list that way."

Dr. John's repertoire spans the entire history of New Orleans music, as perhaps best illustrated on his classic 1992 album, "Goin' Back to New Orleans." He has either worked with or covered the material of all the great musicians mentioned at the beginning of this article.

When Dr. John tickles the ivories, he evokes the turn-of-the-century New Orleans cathouses where Jelly Roll Morton rose to fame. His baritone echoes the magical voice of Louis Armstrong, and the syncopated rhythms of Dr. John's music incorporate the "second line" style made famous in the city's colorful funeral processions, as well as the Afro-Caribbean beats that drive the frenetic marches of its "Indian tribes" during Mardi Gras season.

And though Dr. John's music is mostly about the parties and the good times, his love for New Orleans shows just as much in his sorrow about the devastation visited on the city by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He's angry at the politicians who he feels failed the city's residents both before the storm and in its aftermath, reacting bitterly to the latest news out of South Louisiana last week.

"I agree the governor (Kathleen Blanco) ought not to run again," he said. "I agree the (U.S. Army) Corps of Engineers has been milking the city of New Orleans for $8 million a year for 50 years. The guy who wrote 'Walkin' to New Orleans' (Fats Domino), his whole hometown is gone. I'm not thrilled with the mayor (Ray Nagin); I wish he wouldn't have run again. I'm not thrilled with the president. I'm not thrilled with any of the politicians, period.

"I'm not thrilled with the big organizations that come down, saying they're gonna help. The only people who are doing something are the small organizations who come down and do things. The small organizations help people. The big organizations help themselves get a lot of publicity, but all the money goes to the red tape."

But for those who want to help the people of New Orleans with donations, Dr. John says there are several organizations doing worthwhile work. Nearest to his own heart are the New Orleans Musician's Relief Fund and the New Orleans Musicians Clinic.

"Those help the musicians get established to bring the music back," he said.

And bringing the music back to New Orleans - and to Alton and the world, for that matter - is what Dr. John is all about.

Why You Wanna Give Him the Runaround?

If John Popper’s Car were a Jeopardy category, the topic would be “Things that would have come in handy after Hurricane Katrina.”

My friend Nicky got one of the last groups across the Crescent City Connection (GNO Bridge) past Gretna, and this is the note he emailed:

“let people know that i crossed the bridge safely by walking out with a group of people. let them know to think safety. start the trip with lots of light, water, and as many people :safety in numbers. there are many tourists in a daze, grab them on the way out to swell the numbers. I did all this and walked out safely. on the other side about ten miles down the road is the location of disaster relief and it is getting closer to the bridge as help creates safer passages. who ever reads this letter, keep your head up and spirits positive, no breaks in the chain, no dissent and keep the group healthy. if you stay in new orleans, fire, disease and death is next, there is nothing possibly left to happen.”

Maybe John Popper heard about the Crescent City Connection. He was stopped by State Troopers in Washington State, now home of more billionaires than anywhere else in the country. The billionaires will be fine in increasingly challenging weather, but at least one Blues Traveler wasn’t taking chances as his friend tooled along at 111 mph.

Hidden compartments, a joint, four rifles, nine handguns, night vision goggles, a taser, switchblade, siren, emergency headlights and a public address system. Popper explained to officers he was prepared for a natural disaster. His car could have barreled right through the situation Congresswoman McKinney’s House Resolution 4209 describes:

“New Orleans authorities directed a group of individuals to evacuate New Orleans by crossing the Crescent City Connection Bridge . . . . Following these directions, the individuals, by all accounts an orderly group of men, women, and children, began their dangerous trek through streets flooded with contaminated water and littered with debris and corpses in an effort to reach safety.. As the group approached the bridge, shots were fired, and members of the Gretna law enforcement agencies confronted, threatened, and pointed their weapons at the group, thus preventing the group's entrance into the Gretna area. It is unacceptable to permit anything but the strongest response to the actions of the Gretna law enforcement agencies, which prevented the group's lawful exodus from a life-threatening situation.”

And the situation 18 months later? There are no beds available in the New Orleans Emergency Rooms with flu season ripping through the city and a shortage of medical care, writes Kate Moran in a NOLA.com article. My friend whose eyesight is getting progressively worse waited all day for a one-day free clinic last month, but didn’t make the cut as thousands of other patients were also seeking help.

Mental health is in crisis. Another friend called distraught after his psychiatrist committed suicide. In the 9th Ward today a mentally ill man on a bicycle waved a knife, threw a shard of glass at a National Guardsman, then brandished a BB gun. They shot and killed him as he ran into a rotting 9th Ward home which may have been his. His uncle told reporters he was terrified of police.

And an immigrant laboror was just crushed under the Kenner home he was attempting to raise in preparation for storm season. He had spoken of his fear of the house falling on him.

Our fears are coming true. My paranoid phobia is that the world moves on.

President Bush’s new agreement is going to provide programs to help the poor, hundreds of millions of dollars for families to buy homes, a Navy hospital ship for free health care services all totaling $1.6 billion annually. “When you total all up the money that is spent, because of the generosity of our taxpayers, that’s $8.5 billion to programs that promote social justice,” including education and health, Bush said.

He was talking about Brazil.

We need that Navy hospital ship docked in New Orleans. And John Popper? I’m waiting for the police auction on your car.

Common Sense - Give New Orleans Half the Surge

As of tonight, Surge, Clear and Rebuild is the slogan for 22,000 troops and $6.8 billion for securing the city of Baghdad. If ever there was a time to break ranks, do it now and give the City of New Orleans half.

Because, as you may have heard, the killers have returned to New Orleans. Unlike in Baghdad, you have a green light to enter these neighborhoods. We don’t expect your commitment to be open-ended, but please make it long term this time. We will not provide a safe haven in Central City for any outlaws. We are ready for fewer acts of brazen terror. Increasing safety in New Orleans daily life will give us the breathing space we need to make progress in other areas such as healthcare, electricity, schools and clean water.

Dick Durbin, since you do not love the Surge proposal, cut it in half and give us the extra. Trust us with the hard earned tax dollars you are about to spend. We dried off the French Quarter long ago and it is beautiful. It just needs to be safer, so send your Surge troops. They can call home without international rates.

And Norm Coleman, you say it is a mistake to put more troops at risk to address a problem that is not a military problem and create more targets. So spend half of those billions and that manpower to address our non-military problem. Give us taxation with representation.

There are now two New Orleans weapons of mass destruction. Fear and hopelessness. You are invited to impose security and stability. Strategy, slogans, a new direction, we’ll take it all. As securing Baghdad is already costing hundreds of millions a day, please make do with just 10,000 troops and $3.4 billion more. You are already marching toward escalation – please escalate to reassure a Katrina-weary New Orleans. We will forgive you for the decay and violence overrunning our city if you use the word mistake. We’re a very forgiving people. We re-elected William Jefferson.

With the new Surge, ordinary New Orleans citizens can see visible improvements in their neighborhoods. Benchmarks will include security, an improved economy and shared oil revenues for New Orleans residents. Empower local activist leaders and let us enter political life. Give residents flexibility to spend funds for economic assistance. Expand reconstruction teams to speed the transition to self reliance. Let our citizens move back from Houston to the city they love.

Becky Allen would be a wonderful cultural reconstruction coordinator with a play about rooting out Al K-Da. Draft Nash Roberts and stabilize the region in the face of extreme weather challenges. Mr. Go and the attack on the wetlands must be disrupted. Interrupt the flow of water into our city and seek out and destroy the networks allowing pollution to eat our coast.

Send Surge in for our yellowcake. Red velvet cake, king cake – any cake. Many of us now live where you can’t get a king cake. We will accept debathification. The volunteers gutting homes are halfway there. Dye our fingers purple and we’ll keep them that way all the way through Mardi Gras. There’s your benchmark and your photo op. And we are lousy with oil. Seriously, ask anyone.

Work with the governments of Gretna and Mississippi to help resolve problems along the border. Work through diplomacy with states like California and New York for a national compact for greater assistance. The loss of New Orleans culinary and musical culture would greatly affect all of these areas.

It is the decisive ideological struggle of our time. Disenfranchised extremists have declared their intention to destroy our New Orleans way of life. The most realistic way to protect us is to provide a hopeful alternative and provide liberty to our troubled region. We would like a just and hopeful society from St. Bernard to Kenner. Millions of ordinary people are sick of the violence and want peace and opportunity for their children. Thousands are considering withdrawing and leaving the future of our city to extremists. Please ensure the survival of an irreplacable city fighting for its life.

Deadly acts of violence will continue and we must expect more New Orleans casualties before things get better. Victory will not look like post-Hurricanes Betsy or Camille. But give us your Surge of troops and funds, uphold the rule of law, respect fundamental human liberties and answer to our people.

A rebuilt Central City will fight criminals instead of harboring them. Embed a Surge brigade with every New Orleans police patrol. Build a larger and better equipped police force. Many American citizens think New Orleans is too dependant on United States funding. They want the phased withdrawal of FEMA trailers and tax dollars. But to step back now would force a collapse of New Orleans and result in killings on an unimaginable scale.

Please increase your support at this crucial moment and help us break the cycle of the gangs’ Civil War. Take the machine guns out of the hands of our teenagers. Then stay. Give us the help to make Central City less like Lord of the Flies and more like a disaster zone under reconstruction. The young insurgents will see it as a hostile measure, but it has to be done.

A few thousand more soldiers in a quagmire would not make a difference. A few thousand in New Orleans will make all the difference in the world.

Mobilize talented American civilians to deploy to New Orleans. Selfless men and women are already volunteering at Common Ground, MercyCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Americorps and Acorn. It is noble and necessary. They gut homes far from their families who miss them at the holidays. We mourn the loss of every fallen New Orleans hero like Helen Hill and Dinerral Shavers and owe it to them to build a future worthy of their sacrifice.

As Congress weighs its options, please invest your political capital and actual capital to make this the point at which everyone goes on record as either supporting the reconstruction of New Orleans or the final abandonment of our city. And yes, we will accept a permanent base. There’s lots of room in the 9th Ward.

Rally your fellow congressmen. Call and voice your support and watch closely to see if more and more rank and file members sign on to support the New Orleans Surge. We have no time to lose. Hurricane season is 5 months away and the streets back up in a heavy rain. Drainage is still so bad, New Orleans residents empty the pods in front of their FEMA trailers as even the containers flood with rising water.

This is your last chance to step up or dissolve the city. The hurricane season ahead will set the course for a new century. These are times that reveal the character of a nation.

To the Current Administration:

Dear Sirs, here is a suggested addendum to your next fireside chat with the nation.

The Surge will put the National Guard in the crosshairs of New Orleans violence, but we are dying without it. This dialogue would have been better months ago but it’s not too late. Establish the ground truth of what is happening in New Orleans. It’s not a clean victory, and it’s a long process.

Go to the Map Room and address the nation with details educating us on why a strategy change in New Orleans is needed. If the results don’t come through, readdress the situation with benchmarks like schools, hospitals, quality of life, a comprehensive shared list of where the evacuees now live and what they need. Do not add a signing statement discounting the logic behind the New Orleans surge.

This is the opportunity to hang your Mission Accomplished banner over the Superdome and have it be true. The 8 billion Road Home program, once more than 99 grants go out, will be Lagniappe.*

Feel free to train our security forces. We’re 400 short, so leave a few. Outrageous acts of murder are aimed at innocent New Orleaneans. A vicious cycle of street violence is unacceptable to our people. We hope it is unacceptable to you. Failure in New Orleans would be a disaster for the United States. Gangs would gain new recruits and create chaos in the region. Loss of oil revenues would embolden our enemies. On 8/29 we saw what could happen on the streets of our own cities.

America must succeed in New Orleans. Violence has split the city into enclaves and is shaking the confidence of its citizens. Your administration must put forward an aggressive effort to reassure them. It is clear that there were not enough U.S. troops left after 8/29 to secure our neighborhoods. Give us a strong commitment.

If New Orleans does not get 10,000 troops and $3.4 billion to save her, get ready to at some point look into a camera and admit that once again the responsibility rested with you.

After all, it’s a different world after 8/29.

Bullet Celebrity

The only person who's ever told me he hoped to get winged by a bullet in the French Quarter was British folk musician Joe Topping who walked from Chicago to New Orleans to raise awareness for our New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund.

Vice President Dick Cheney came to town and shut down Canal Street the day of Joe's second line welcome along the river, so it wasn't the media event one would hope for after a blazingly hot summer walk. The Mayor was supposed to attend - I don't know what happened with that.

So after Joe's three month trek we were taking him out to hear Bob French, but Frenchman Street was shut down when some tourists were grazed by bullets. The next day we went to visit Bob on WWOZ-FM but it was his fall fund drive day off.

"A graze - they'd HAVE to write about that. Liverpool man shot after three month walk across country in support of New Orleans musicians," Joe said. It was probably partly heat stroke and partly wanting to get the mainstream media to notice New Orleans.

They've noticed.

One hundred and fifty shots were fired last night in one bar alone. A friend musing on the beautiful life still available for anyone who carves it out for himself in the French Quarter says, "You have to be pretty unlucky to get shot."

After already having taken a Zulu spear to the head from a balcony during Mardi Gras 04, I'm ready to go to Carnival as a giant rabbit's foot wrapped in four leaf clovers.

The Queen of Bikus this year is the ER doctor who cleaned my head, sutured it by making a mohawk knot, then medically glued it shut. She was dressed as a crash test dummy. After getting a round of applause for being a trouper, my husband pointed out it would be poor form to go home with a split head. So I got back on my bike, slapped on an icepack and kept rolling.

By the end of the day on Frenchman Street, whoever was loaded found it hilarious, and friends who were still sentient were taken aback by my garland of bloody flowers. This town used to roll with anything.

But according to the New York Times, we're a shaken tribe between the crime, the tornadoes and the red tape. After each mainstream article there's a contingent here that says if people would just stop focusing on the crime, tourists and evacuees would come back and we could bump up the police force.

The new New Orleans Recovery Czar could find us a nice Rasputin, and things would get rolling like his bicycle ride through the Gentilly area as New Orleans got the right kind of coverage.

Or someone could wing a folk singer. They're troupers.

Do Not Go Gentilly Into That Good Night

Or What are We, Job?

It feels strange to wish that the tornado had ripped through my husband’s childhood house. But as tornadoes tore through Uptown, Westwego and Gentilly this week, they somehow skipped over my mother-in-law's abandoned home. They also missed us by a block in the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund Apartment, but we’re handing it back to a musician this week and best of luck to him.

That leaves an 80-year-old 23 days to either somehow expedite the charity waiting list she has been on for a year and a half, or find the means to pay for gutting the home her late husband built. After 30 days if neither happens, the city will own it. Her home now is worthless and the property underneath it may top out at $40,000. The contents are still in it – with no new residence and $20,000 in insurance offered to start over, where could she have stored her moldy heirlooms?

Her wedding veil. Jeff’s childhood Mardi Gras costumes. I have never met anyone who turned family mementos into a shrine to the level that Miss Gloria does. With this year passing like a bad dream, she is still not ready to deal with the loss of them. And we don’t live here anymore.

Here’s the thing about the New Orleans recovery czar’s exploratory bicycle ride through Gentilly Ridge. It’s a ridge. The homes there were occupied mainly by little old ladies and it’s not likely to flood again. Notices have been pasted on doors, not mailed to former residents. I’m guessing there’s still no inter-governmental list sharing. Whatever the case, of the columns of residents listed in the paper for a hearing on Wednesday four showed up.

A policeman, a woman who made the trip back from Houston, a very quiet couple, my brother-in-law and us. The woman who came back from Houston gave her cane a good swing before heading into the private meeting, and the policeman was carrying his gun. We joked around to relieve the tension, but after hours of waiting they all came out looking numb.

It’s impossible to emphasize enough the level at which New Orleans residents have become Gandhi-like in their ability to not punch someone in the eye when he really has it coming. We told the committee tht Gloria has waited for 18 months for volunteers to gut her home. They said:

“Well I guess that didn’t work out for you, did it?”

Then the moderator pulled out a photo of the home Jeff's father built and said that it’s so modest, "how hard could it be to get rid of?"

Jeff did an admirable job of sitting on his hands and my snappy comments generally occur to me two days later. The tape recorder was turned off for off the record comments that could easily have been on the record. I don’t think this record will be consulted in the coming years.

As far as wishing for a tornado to implode what’s left Gloria’s home and push us to the front of the gutting waiting list, as of this week State Farm will no longer write new insurance policies in Mississippi because that state had the affront to instute criminal prosecution. I hope that insurance companies still consider tornadoes wind. Presumably the laws of physics still apply - Mardi Gras has been known to turn all that on its head.

In this whole nightmare, the thing the most chilling is my brother-in-law’s calm. He has now absorbed that there is nothing you can do about being treated like this on every level. I watched the local news, it probably didn’t get picked up by national affiliates, as a woman wept on camera explaining that a tornado tore through her FEMA hotel room and she does not live in the trailer in front of her ruined home because she still can’t get the keys.

She wondered aloud why she deserves this. It reminded me that packing up and moving across town to a hotel because tornados knocked out our power, cranking the AC and putting our frozen food on it like we learned to do after 8/29 is a minor inconvenience.

To the woman on the news who now has neither hotel room nor trailer keys I am confident that in New Orleans, Job would still be waiting for keys to his trailer.

It's Disney Meets Fellini Week

Walt meet Frederico. Frederico, meet Walt. New Orleans is Disney meets Fellini this week.

Freaky Friday

Today the upscale suburb of Covington told parents they would let students make up work later if their kids stayed home out of concern for an impending campus brawl. Tonight is Covington’s big carnival parade, and quoted in the Times-Picayune, Lt. Jack West called it “one of the biggest conspiracies to get out of school that I’ve ever seen.” Kids were asking their parents to rescue them from school because shots were fired and the building was locked down, West said. Ten officers were posted, just in case.

Working at the Car Wash

Yesterday a teenager was accused of stealing a $70,000 BMW at a New Orleans car wash, and wrapping it around a tree after an extended police chase. It was his first day on the job.

Very Poor Parenting

Last night 17-year-old Clarence Johnson allegedly killed another teen who had just beaten him in a fistfight. Police say Clarence's mother sent him back out to avenge himself with a gun. The victim had just returned to New Orleans after a long evacuation in Dallas.

This morning, the Times-Picayune cover was a photo of the alleged killer holding a fist full of cash in one hand and a gun in the other. The portrait had been mounted on the wall of his mother’s home. His teen victim arrived in town from Dallas by bus yesterday, and was murder victim number 21 by last night. Clarence's mother is jailed on second degree murder charges.

Very Good Parenting

It’s hard to move from that story to one of the kids who are alright, but my friend Jonah is a comic with Muscular Dystrophy. He called inviting us to his standup comedy (his words) routine tonight. Each week Jonah wheels himself from his gutted home through the streets of New Orleans to the local comedy club. They just gave him his first Friday night show. His parents stand behind his spirit and his promise. I can get behind parenting like that.

The Disney Ending

More than 20 years ago, young John Thompson was imprisoned for killing a local executive. In 2003, weeks before John was to die by lethal injection at Angola, he was acquitted thanks to a prosecutor’s deathbed confession of hidden evidence. Here’s where it gets pretty Disney - as of this week the city owes John $14 million and Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are allegedly in talks to play his pro-bono attorneys in a Disney movie.

BuzzFeed.com has run this blog under “Caring About New Orleans Again." And later under "Not Caring About New Orleans Again." I prefer the Disney version.

What Could U Be?

Out of an uptown New Orleans gutter today I pulled a crumpled faded note that read:

"Note to self, continue enriching u _ _ _ _ _ _." Need alternative energy source with today's Chevron Oil's maleic anhydride leak. Sure hope residents stay indoors. Murphy Oil paying $330 million for its Katrina leak"

What could U be? And who could have written the note?

With the Congressional Homeland Security Committee Susan Collins (R), Ted Stevens (R), George Voinovich (R), Norm Coleman (R), Tom Coburn (R), John Sununu (R), Pete Domenici (R), John Warner (R), Barak Obama (D), Chairman Joe Lieberman (?) and Mary Landreau (D) invited to Louisiana for 8/29 hearings, it could have been anyone.

Actually only the last three showed so that narrows it down substantially.

Could it be from Mary? Landreau has been quoted in Roll Call saying "“I often think we would have been better off if the terrorists had blown up our levees. Maybe we’d have gotten more attention.”

I uncrumpled the note further and it read, "seriously, look into e _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ uranium. Could offset bankrupt New Orleans branch of Entergy company. Strangely, it looks like they tripled their national energy profits this quarter."

Could it be Barak? Obama has mentioned that "We may be in danger of actually forgetting New Orleans." Nothing would bring it back to national attention faster than e _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ r a n i u m.

Or maybe Lieberman, who's in charge of the Katrina branch of the Homeland Security Committee? Taking the road more traveled, he has said he will not hold hearings on the Administration's actions and play a game of "gocha." No word on whether he plans to incorporate games of Chutes and Ladders or Hungry Hungry Hippoes into later 8/29 investigations.

Four hundred children were turned away from New Orleans school admission this semester. Not enough room for them. Bill Cosby on a recent visit said that “There’s a great disrespect for children, not just African-American children, but children throughout these United States,” according to the Times-Picayune.

Insightful but not incendiary.

There was a violent outburst on the West Bank today. Not the Gaza Strip, New Orleans. Cars started pulling over to fire shots into the melee and a bystander was killed leaving a convenience store. An 18-year old was booked with second-degree murder.

A 13-year old boy just killed himself playing Russian Roulette.

And a 17-year-old ran out of St. Charles Parish Hospital and drowned in a retention pond before anyone could save him. The Sheriff's office did not have information on why the boy was in the hospital.

We're losing our children so quickly. Dinerral Shavers, Jr., 7, could be lost in a different way without help. A budding drummer, his musician father was killed in crossfire meant for someone else last month.

Whoever is enriching u _ _ _ _ _ _, I'm sorry someone more important did not find your note. We need intervention, and what you are claiming to do has been known to send hundreds of thousands of young people and billions of dollars in aid into a land in crisis.

Despite being left out of the State of the Union address and the Road Home grants, the state of the Gulf Coast is still in crisis.

The Saints Sixth Straight Superbowl

My fellow displaced Saints fans without tickets to Sunday’s game are gathering at Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn, Illinois. That makes it old home week. Twenty years ago I was features editor at the Berwyn / Cicero LIFE Newspaper.

Cicero is where Al Capone retired. Little old ladies willing to talk say he kept a nice garden and minded his own business. The glamour part of the job was asking Vlasta Sneeburger, America’s polka queen, about her appearances on the Late Show. Berwyn is the home of one of the biggest elderly populations in the country, so when there were no other stories available I would hang out at the senior center for gossip. One couple reunited after a high school falling out. “Couple Scratches 65-year Itch” was our headline.

The senior experience is coming in handy - my dad went into a nursing home this week. I’ve been feeding him dinner because his new thing is getting his hand almost to his mouth then changing his mind about the whole endeavor. Between our Native American heritage and Dalton Gang ancestors, it’s like trying to feed combined Cowboys and Indians with Alzheimer’s. He tried to snatch someone else’s dinner tonight because his took too long to get to the table. Almost got it, too.

They play country music on a continuous loop in the cafeteria. But thanks to the hurricane, at least I get to be there to listen to country music and spoon mashed potatoes into my angry father who sometimes tries to steer the spoon back toward me. And I'm there to write "Dr." on his glasses before his name to help him remember.

Leon Redbone played Fitzgerald’s Wednesday and says the Mayan calendar gives us six years to exist as a planet. That’s not too long to have to feed someone. And at least those six years will include the Saints winning on Sunday. I was probably one of the only people in Chicago to fall asleep when the Bears won the Superbowl. I was at a Superbowl party so no, not a big sports fan, but the Saints are going to win.

For New Orleans, for our last six years as a planet, for my last 17 months as a nomad, for my husband whose ‘67 Galaxie 500 had the original Saints sticker on it and is now imploded (the car, not Jeff), the Saints are going to win.

Bill Fitzgerald is generously giving NOLAChain Chicago and New Orleans Musician Relief Fund friends the Side Bar to watch the game. I’m lobbying for the main bar, as nobody puts Baby in the corner. Sports fans rarely get Dirty Dancing references, so nobody puts Saints Fans in the corner. Bill has legitimate concerns about our cheering as the Bears lose and getting the crowd worked up, but that will ensure that I’m awake for the whole game.

Fitzgerald’s is where I started doing Poetry Slams and singing acapella songs in the 80s. In the 90’s my husband met me singing acapella at Carrolton Station in New Orleans. Last Jazz Fest we met Bill Fitzgerald at Snake and Jake’s Christmas Club Lounge. Some of my best friends are bars, and they eventually tie everything back together.

The Road Home Program has spent $19 million on employee travel but does not have the budget to itemize. They have now distributed 200 grants to New Orleaneans. If Leon Redbone’s Mayan calendar is right, maybe that won’t seem so horrifying in 2013.

It gives Louisiana time to win 6 more Superbowls and get out at least 66 more Road Home Grants. These days, the road is the same coming back.

Racists Say the Darndest Things

My question about what was really on the MySpace image for the late Dinerral Shavers’ 16-year-old student was wishful thinking. Apparently it’s a machine gun. That said, the Hot 8 drummer whose band has suffered so much loss of life received the sendoff he deserved. The heartbreak is apparent in every picture of his second line, as is the pride in cultural traditions.

The New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund (nomrf.org) is collecting donations for his son, 7-year-old Dinerral, Jr. Now back in our home away from Sweet Home New Orleans, the sympathy is soothing, but it’s like you’re describing life on Vesuvius to residents of the Garden of Eden. NOLA.com and WWOZ are my lifelines to home like all displaced New Orleaneans, and here’s one of the responses to the recent violence in the city. I’ve omitted his name in case you live in his town, find him and decide to kick his ass:

PL of BM writes:

"The majority of the violence seems to be happening in New Orleans because of the blacks that are comming (sic) back into the city. Expect more problems with the blacks as more of them return to New Orleans.

I was told by many people I know who live in New Orleans, the first Mardi Gras that was held after Katrina was the best they had attended in years because there weren't nearly as many blacks attending in the crowds, hardly any. Didn't have to dodge any bullets or constantly watch your back."

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a Dalton. We lived in a hopeless time and decided it was a good idea to rob our hometown bank again in broad daylight while simultaneously robbing a bank across town and telling our friends how cool the whole thing was going to go down. My mom says the Dalton Gang fell in with a bad crowd. I’m hard pressed to know who that would be.

Bluster. Hopelessness. A dying culture. Being morons. None of the gangster outlaw tradition is black or white but the festering scab of New Orleans racism picking at itself is the elephant in the room. The elephant is the size of a Blaine Kern float. And the scab is the size of Algiers.

For 10 years I heard offhand racist comments in the south until I realized that yelling Yankee Yankee Yankee would stop an incoming salvo. Yet New Orleans is so integrated that some neighborhoods mix mansions with shotgun houses. This does not happen in Chicago where homes range from Gold Coast to Cabrini Green and never the twain shall meet.

I used to think New Orleans was a hotbed of racism, but while living there I realized it was one of the only cities in America that talked about it so constantly. Dating back to the first American Free People of Color, it is a world unto itself. It produced souls like Ernie K-Doe, the Emperor of the Universe. His passing was a great loss but wax Ernie still makes an occasional appearance thanks to Antoinette.

There is a fine line between New Orleans life and death. Our cemeteries are things of beauty. A second line is a party, a dance, a sendoff and proof that you were loved in this world.

I hold dear every life lost to 8/29 and will never resign myself to the cultural vaccum PL of BM writes about. I hope to Jah his statement does not hold true for Mardi Gras 07.

"There weren’t nearly as many blacks attending in the crowds. Hardly any."

A House Not Meant to Stand

Yesterday a house collapsed onto another house in Central City.

So far, no one knows what caused the collapse or if anyone was living in the house at the time.

It takes a minute to absorb the fact that no one knows if anyone was living in the house, because I am now back in a midwestern town where each home is accountable to the home next to it. That has not been the case in Central City for a long time. It is what Tennessee Williams called "A House Not Meant to Stand."

Dinerral Shavers' funeral is today in Central City. One of his myspace messages from a 16-year-old is: "R.I.P shavers dude u was da coolest teacher at da skool man gone but not forgotten." The photo is either a gun or a sophisticated can opener, I hope it's the latter.

There is such a need for hope right now, you can almost hear the sucking sound of it leaving with each murder of 2007. The New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund talked with police about our sponsoring Dinerral's second line, but they were so concerned about potential violence we decided to use the money for more musicians' grants.

There were more than a dozen murders in the last week, six on Thursday.

Dinerral's second line will take place anyway because you can't wash away culture ingrained that deeply. It's his well-deserved last gig. But it's where gangs sometimes try to settle a grudge among the chaos.

The role of a spy boy was originally to look up the street for rival gangs. Big Chief Tootie Montana helped bring peace to the tradition of Mardi Gras Indians. He changed the competition into who had the prettiest suit, and Big Chief always won. He died in City Hall protesting arrests of Indians on Super Sunday, their springtime march.

Dinerral was caught in the crossfire of a teen allegedly aiming for his stepson. He probably saved his family's life, driving away from the shooter and toward safety as he died.

It took an hour for the ambulance to come as he lay in the street.

Dirges are played at the beginning of a second line, but at the end you sing "Didn't He Ramble" to give the departed a joyous sendoff. We are singing the dirge this week. "Didn't He Ramble" is a long way off.

Chief of Chiefs Tootie Montana said it all with his last words on this earth at the New Orleans City Council.

"This has got to stop."

Every Single Life

In a stark reminder of what it takes to come home and stay, musician Dinerral Shavers was killed yesterday while driving down Dumaine with his wife and children. A drummer, music teacher and part of the city we cannot afford to lose, he was gunned down with the senseless violence stalking New Orleans in ever-increasing statistics.

"Every time you saw him, he was the same person with a great smile," said fellow musician James Andrews. "A wonderful person with plenty of encouraging words. He was going to make it, too.

"He wasn't stingy with trying to teach the kids his stuff. He was a great drummer.

"And through the Hot 8 his music will live on forever. Through New Orleans," James said.

One of Dinerral's band members has been staying in the NOmrf apartment when he comes back to town to work, and he had been happy that the band's gig phone got turned back on over Christmas.

The Hot 8 was most recently known for their second line through the Ninth Ward with David Gregg Andrews in Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke." His mother's home was the one in the movie that floated across the street and landed in her neighbor's yard. Her quote from the movie was that he can't say she never gave him anything.

James is right - Dinerral was going to make it. His band was working on an album and his students are going to march for Mardi Gras - the first marching band the school has ever had, thanks to his teaching efforts.

Seven New Orleans policemen were just indicted for shooting civilians on a bridge post 8/29. Drummer Scott Sherman died under mysterious circumstances in that area. His brother Chris was first told by the coroner's office that Scott was shot in the head, then later told something else. Regardless of the circumstances, he's gone. Their last gig was Dr. Specs Optical Illusions with my husband at Mystic Knights of the Mau Mau party, summer 2005.

I kept passing signs this week on the way to the French Quarter. Rev. John C. Raphael Jr. and his son are on a hunger strike and they stand with their supporters between the lines of traffic holding signs that simply say, "Enough."

The story of Dinerral's slaying was covered locally, and combined with news of the other murder last night. A man whose 9-month pregnant girlfriend was left grieving at the scene.

Let's hope for the day when New Orleans murders no longer happen with the frequency that requires more than one killing per story.

Most international news bureaus have closed their New Orleans offices. I was told off the record by a national outlet not to bother pitching any story with the words second line, devastation or Katrina because the public is no longer interested. So we've been trying to slip around the picket line with "Redefine 8/29." Because I am tired of how hard the rest of the country is working to forget the post-disaster struggle from day to day.

With 2007 approaching, let us hope for the day when the national media again picks up the story of every single life lost in our city.

Every. Single. Life.

A Bad Day in New Orleans is Better Than a Good Day Anywhere Else

Call me a starry-eyed returnee, if only for a week, but a bad day in New Orleans is still better than a good day anywhere else. We earned this visit driving through fog that eventually had one foot of visibility on Sunday night.

Monday was the holiday party at Crepe Nanu. I put such a dent in the shrimp I’m probably barred from attending next year. That’s part of being land-locked and shrimp deprived. Bill Davis of Dash Rip Rock talked me into doing Ooh Aahs on “Chain Gang” with We Are The Pretenders, much to the alarm of my husband on bass. (Little plug, they’re playing tonight (23rd) at the Howlin Wolf.) And Frankie Ford represented for young harpists.

The evening descended into Russian Roulette Karaoke with some quality Baby Baby Don’t Get Hooked On Me. Singing anywhere near Susan Cowsill is daunting as she harmonizes better than any carbon based life form on the planet. Alex Chilton was too wise to get anywhere near karaoke.

Tuesday was the Maple Leaf with owner Hank who held down the fort uptown during the height of post-8/29 chaos and never did evacuate. He’s talking about getting a mega-generator for future preparedness. Then on to Jacquimo’s for alligator cheesecake, steak and crème brulee. Jack was making the rounds with his own mini-tree, and the next table over was singing four part harmony for no discernable reason.

Miss Elaine shouted “Felice Navidad” to the kitchen staff on the way out and they hollered back like it was a festival. Then to Snake and Jake’s Christmas Club Lounge for a couple of Abitas on the house. The midwest isn’t big on free drinks, even if you make a big stink about being an evacuee. It’s getting expensive.

Wednesday was torrential rain all night. Water started rising and cars were back on the neutral grounds. Houses started flooding and the mood dropped. The pumps still aren’t up to par, but no one was talking about what this spring could bring.

Thursday was more rain, dropping off our RE-Define 8/29 shirts off at RetroActive on Magazine and NOmrf landlord Dave cooking for the neighborhood. The rain finally subsided.

And today was paperwork for a donated van from Michal and her husband. NOmrf is passing it along to a brass band. Tonight, I toured the holiday lights on Saint Charles, the French Quarter, then Lakeview.

It was so depressing seeing a still-dark Lakeview that it took Cajun eggnog daquiris and the Creature from the Black Lagoon to turn things around.

Self-medicating? Hell yes. But only as a passenger. Apparently there's a lot of it going around, going by the rising number of light poles knocked over. They’re tilted like stalks of corn in the wind. But then everything looks like corn to me these days.