New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund Suggests Direct Flight - Paris to New Orleans

We're thinking Paris Hilton needs to get to New Orleans when they spring her and start giving back.

Huffington Post LINK

NOMRF Adds A Latte Link and Thanks Little Steven

The New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund is adding a latte link - because this summer every dollar counts. So if you're wired enough already, skip today's latte or tea and contribute $5 to a New Orleans musician who needs help getting through a long, slow summer. With half the population still gone, gigs are hard to come by and the rebuilding funds are slow in coming.

NOMRF Latte Link.

Also, thanks to our friend Mike Mills of REM, check out this week's New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund link on Little Steven's Underground Garage.

Feel free to repost this - the $5's could add up to a lot of help for New Orleans muscians.

Why I Won't Be Invited to the State Farm Pool Party

Katrina Billboard Blasts Big Insurance in its Own Back Yard

The New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund, Inc., an independant grass roots nonprofit, has not taken donations from big insurance, big oil or big anything. Just amazing musicians and music lovers from around the world at NOMRF.org.

Remains of Barry Move Up the East Coast

It’s a displacement thing, that NOLA.com can still get a spit take out of me before I read the story. “Five teens killed” was today’s story, but it was a recap from last summer. And “Remains of Barry Moving Up East Coast” was not about Barry Cowsill, found last winter in the Mississippi.

We watched Entertainment Tonight’s child star coverage when Barry first went missing, and tried to identify whether he was the blurred image from the Convention Center while evacuated to a stranger’s home in Milwaukee. We would have followed the search on CNN but the stranger offering her home for a month didn’t have cable. It saved us from staying glued to cable news which probably didn’t cover the story any more than Entertainment Tonight.

Found four months after the storm, Barry was brought up the East Coast to his family home in Rhode Island for a memorial. Accompanying him from New Orleans was his sister Susan Cowsill, Barry’s equal in turning any stage into a living room and making you want to get as close to that voice as possible. She describes the strong wind that blew just as they were scattering his ashes, and Barry blew back in everyone’s face. If you knew him, you would expect nothing less.

Barry has a Wikipedia entry and if I understood Wikipedia, I would add more about his humor to balance out the child star, sudden loss of fame, suicide attempts and pseudonyms. His occasional name change was the smartest thing any child star ever attempted and Barry Scott often pulled it off. It may have bought him a few more years on the planet.

The Partridge Family was originally going to be the Cowsill family but their father pulled the plug when Shirley Jones came on board instead of Mrs. Cowsill. So he sold the rights to their life story of a traveling band and Keith Partridge got Barry’s life. When David Cassidy came to town Barry had a head of steam and wanted to challenge Keith to a rumble. After all, “He thinks he’s me but he just played me on t.v.” A little more Danny than Keith, Barry challenged everyone who loved him. You had to work at it

Like most of the lost souls who find a landing in New Orleans, he would fade away when the town no longer offered a couch, and come back when it did. When it was your turn to put him up, you started to eye the next stopover wistfully. Anyone who has a larger than life Katrina friend on their couch knows what I’m talking about. My husband Jeff, Barry’s former bandmate from The Stragglers, heard the best of Barry if the stars aligned and he hadn’t partied his voice into dust the night before.

It was easy to forget Barry’s contribution to musical history until you saw him on stage, and he would jump any stage he got close enough to. “The Rain the Park and Other Things,” (or “I Love the Flower Girl” if you know it from the commercial), got to #2 on the Billboard charts. Sometimes when he needed money, Barry would sell family photos. One was of the Cowsills all walking up the Vatican steps in their matching outfits to meet the Pope. They are so young it’s heartbreaking. It was at about the time they were singing about long, beautiful hair.

Barry was trying to get sober when Katrina hit. I hoped that he was Barry Scott again, somewhere out on the road. He probably would have liked to fade away like that, but instead was found face down in the Mississippi. Sculptor Jimmy Descant made a beautiful rocketship urn and included things found in Barry’s pocket, like his peace dove. Barry’s death was ruled a drowning from the hurricane. A plaque was anonymously placed on the Tree of Life in New Orleans, “to a true legend who died on the levee.”

We’ve posted his song, “Old Timeless,” on myspace.com/nomrf, and a podcast on nomrf.org as a tribute as the remains of Barry move up the East Coast again.

Lost Lincoln - It Was 151 Years Ago Today

"Generally, when he was speakin', he was cool and quiet and things all fit together, and when you come away you was calm - but your head was workin'; but that time up to Bloomington he was like - what's that the Bible calls it? - avengin fire" - yes, sir, that's it, he was like avengin fire." Roland W. Diller, witness to Lincoln's Lost Speech.

It was 151 years ago today in my evacuation location of Bloomington Illinois that Abraham Lincoln gave the best speech of his career and nobody took notes. I went to the museum and asked if they had a copy of Lincoln's Lost Speech. Never hurts to ask. They don't.

The speech has been credited for starting the catapulting him to the presidency and kicking off the Illinois Republican Party. We know Lincoln's flatboat trips to New Orleans were part of what influenced the speech.

During one of those trips, Lincoln ran aground in New Salem, Illinois and as he figured out a way to raise the flatboat and save his cargo, locals came out to watch. They invited him to stop by on his way back through, and he ended up moving there. Lincoln probably mentioned his patented invention to lift a barge that runs aground in his Bloomington speech "Discoveries and Inventions," but the wrong date was listed in the newspaper and the location was hard to find.

A plaque next to our local cafe says so. There's something inherently midwestern about not only commemorating the site of Lincoln's "Inventions" speech, but also why it was a flop. But there is also great encouragement to be found here.

After 10 years in New Orleans, I'm back in Illinois via Katrina. The courthouse museum hosted a costume gala for our musicians' nonprofit (NOMRF). Kelly's Bakery brought the food, A. Renee brought the wine, and we helped a displaced pianist who came down from Chicago. the Lincoln statue outside was resplendent with purple, gold and green balloons.

Lincoln was encouraged here, too. His friend Jesse Fell saw him walking on that same courthouse lawn and brought him into brother's office across the street to to request an autobiography for the campaign. Fell, the grandfather of Adlai Stevenson (who also ran for president from Bloomington because there's something in the water), had been hearing the excitement out East over the Lincoln wiping the floor with Douglas, the country's best known orator at the time.

Lincoln turned him down for a year, and when he changed his mind, he asked that, "If any thing be made out of it, I wish it to be modest."

It contained the following bit of his history, " If a straggler supposed to understand latin, happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizzard-- . . . The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity--"

He downplayed his oratory skills. He once acquitted a New Salem friend's son from a murder charge in the "Almanac Case," using the height of the moon to challenge a witness. Then he refused payment out of friendship.

Lincoln told Fell as to the note's briefness, 'There is not much of it, because there is not much of me."

Fell's family's office was a wall away from our apartment, so we wake up to groups of tourists with headphones peering up at our second floor window on the new Lincoln tour. They also visit the site of the Lost Speech. Of the speech, John Wentworth of the Chicago Democrat said, "I shall not mar any of its fine proportions by attempting even a synopsis of it."

By all reports, the press was either too enthralled to cover the speech, or Lincoln was censored for his early and fiery rhetoric. Whatever the case, no authenticated copy of the speech exists. Bloomington author and Illinois Supreme Court Reporter Isaac Newton Phillips in 1901 discounted a version of the speech written decades after the fact and reiterates, "We do not know what he said."

Druggist Ronald W. Diller, describes it in "Lincoln's Lost Speech, by Elwell Crissey. "I never knew exactly what did happen there. All I recollect is that a the beginnin' of that speech I was settin in the back of the room and when I come to I was hanging' on to the front of the platform. I recollect I looked up and seen Joe Medill [Chicago publisher] standin on the reporters' table lookin foolish-like and heard him say, "Good Lord, boys! I ain't took a note!"

"He knew what he was doing' that night," said Diller. "He knew he was cuttin' loose. He knew them old Whigs was goin' to have it in for him for doin' it, and he meant to show 'em he didn't care a red cent what they thought. He knew there was always a lot of fools in that new party he was joining - the kind that's always takin' up with every new thing comes along to get something to orate about. He saw clear as day that if they got started right that night, he'd got to fire 'em up, so he threw back his shoulders and lit in."

This was table-jumping, string bean Lincoln. All cheekbones because he had not yet taken an 11-year old's advice to grow a beard to lend him gravitas. Possibly the first campaign image consultant, and she did a bang-up job. The Lost Speech did not survive to be dissected, and it could have referenced anything. The courthouse burned to the ground at the turn of the century, much of the Lincoln lore burning with it.

It probably wasn't a religious speech. Upon finding out most of Springfield ministers polled against his candidacy he once said, "I am not a Christian -- God knows I would be one but I have carefully read the Bible, and I do not understand this book. These men well know that I am for freedom in the territories, freedom everywhere as far as the Constitution and the laws will permit, and that my opponents are for slavery. They know this, and yet, with this book in their hands, in the light of which human bondage cannot live a moment, they are going to vote against me. I do not understand it at all.'

There isn't much Lincoln was afraid to talk about. He shared a bed with his friend for years, as he later commented on to Congress when nominating James Speed for Attorney General. Lincoln said he didn't know James as well as his brother. "That is not strange, for I slept with Joshua for four years, and I suppose I ought to know." Historians are still arm-wrestling over the significance of the general storekeeper inviting Lincoln to share his bed when he came in to buy bedding. Don't know, don't care, but Honest Abe indeed.

A 19th Century candidate could be an acknowledged agnostic with a long-term bunk buddy, turbulent marriage, well of genius, streak of melancholy and love of poetry. But when you first ignited a firestorm against slavery, the pencils fell silent.

Some clues to the Lost Speech content may be found in this earlier letter to Joshua. "How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor or degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes"

"When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy," the letter concludes.

These thoughts were rising to the surface the year before the speech. He was running against the Know-Nothings so that part of the speech probably wrote itself. I like to think that at some point he said, "Stop owning people now," but it's all pure conjecture.

"His speech was full of fire and energy and force. It was logic; it was pathos; it was enthusiasm; it was justice, equity, truth, and right set ablaze by the devine fires of a soul maddened by the wrong; it was hard, heavy, knotty, gnarly, backed with wrath," said Lincoln's last law partner William Herndon who described it as the best speech of Lincoln's career.

"In ten minutes he was about eight feet tall; his face was white, his eyes was blazin' fire, and he was thunderin, 'Kansas shall be free!' 'Ballots, not bullets!' 'We won't go out of the Union and you shan't.'" Diller described. That last line is the only part of the speech universally agreed upon.

"Generally, when he was speakin', he was cool and quiet and things all fit together, and when you come away you was calm - but your head was workin'; but that time up to Bloomington he was like - what's that the Bible calls it? - avengin fire" - yes, sir, that's it, he was like avengin fire," Diller added.

Slavery has long been abolished but every era has its elephant in the room. At the dawn of this year's hurricane season, New Orleans could use another great orator with the Mr. Go oil barge canal aimed like a bullet into the heart of our city. And hundreds of thousands of us are not home.

A New Hampshire music festival this fall benefiting the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund will be up the road from the Primaries No matter who makes the speeches this time, I promise to take notes.

Because we are long overdue for more avenging fire.

Jazzfest Pictures Worth 1000 Blogs

It took a month of Sundays, we're slow unpackers, but here's our festival season photo series. NOMRF's Gambit Big Easy Award recognition, a Katrina-delated artist's wedding reception, Jessie Hill Day, Musician Open Houses, froglegs with Wardell, it's all in there.

We welcome any summer benefits you can dream up, but first put on a festive song, pop a cold Abita and play the slideshow. It is dedicated to Richard Spector, whose friends missed him at the Fest.

New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund Slideshow.

Mother's Eye

* Reprinted from the Huffington Post


I've been meaning to compile a Mother's Day tribute, and just pulled into my Midwest evacuation location after a productive New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund month back home at Jazzfest.

My mother has always been funny, odd, unpredictable - there aren't enough adjectives. She could kick a football across our half-acre front yard. She can still kick as high as a Rockette for no apparent reason. My husband points out that I do the same thing.

Last month when I was checking mom into an Alzheimer's ward, she thought it was a girls' dorm because my dad's Alzheimer's ward is on the other side of the hallway. "I'm a basket case," she whispered. "Then you're finally going to right place!" I said and it seemed to cheer her up. Before checking into the facility, she asked for a 5 minute head start to make a break for it and run for the woods. The woods wouldn't know what hit them.

Here are four things I'd like to thank Mom for. They've instilled my values, for better or worse.

Trips to the wars.

Johannesburg and Soweto as Apartheid was ending. Jerusalem and Beirut during the Arab Israeli conflict. Rhodesia and Zambezia when they were having the war over Victoria Falls. Now it's Zimbabwe.

Most of my childhood trips involved at least one moment of thinking, 'Now, this ain't right."

Thanks for the disaster evacuation preparation.

The roller rink.

Our small town rink closed in the summer and mom stored the candy and soda in a basement freezer. For the most part, snacks were fish from our pond or whatever the farmers were planting in the side field that year - rolled wheat, soybeans or raw sweet corn. But all summer long, I'd sneak down to the freezer which wasn't grounded and get a jolt of electricity every time I reached in for a Snicker's bar.

Thanks for the diet help.

A pony.

Her name was Pepper, my dad being a doctor and a would-be gentleman farmer with 40 acres and one horse. Not unlike kids who promise to take care of a dog but don't, the winters got longer and colder, and we hated the hike through the snow. A horse can probably tell when you're over it, and Pepper trotted over to the neighbor's field one day and they kept her. She got to hang out with other horses and we all got to wave when we drove by.

Thanks for the practice in letting go.

The Eye Thing.

Mom is unlucky in the kitchen. One time she sliced through her arm cutting frozen meat and drove to the doctor with the knife still in her arm. Another time our pressure cooker blew up and scalded her eye. The eye was red, oozy, crusted over, and Mom called me on the fact that I couldn't look at it. "It's not that bad," I lied while looking down at the tablecloth.

Later that night, I heard rustling at my window. At first I thought it was tree branches outside, but eventually opened the curtain to check. Pressed up against the window was my mother's hideous eye. I screamed jumped back from the curtain to lock my door.

All she said at breakfast the next day was, "Not that bad, huh?"

Thanks for preparing me for life's surprises.

Lord Willing

Our friend Joe Topping has posted his beautiful song, "Lord Willing" on the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund MySpace.

For friends and family of musicians including Alvin Batiste, as well as anyone who lost a loved one to the storm, it is a comfort.

The Ocean Moving All Night

Stay with us. Don't sink to the bottom like a fish going to sleep.
Be with the ocean moving steadily all night, not scattered like a rainstorm.
The spring we're looking for is somewhere in this murkiness

See the night-lights up there traveling together, the candle awake in its gold dish.

Don't slide into the cracks of the ground like spilled mercury.
When the full moon comes out, look around.

- Rumi

Rest In Peace, Dr. Ray Earl Dalton
4/8/26 - 5/12/07

I love you dad.

When Wardell Gets His Due

Today is your chance to meet Wardell Quezergue, the Creole Beethoven, at the Lagniappe Tent on the Fairgrounds. He's getting his all-star tribute on the paddock and the man can eat some serious oysters so look for the legend surrounded by shells.

We first got to know him at a Chicago Dr. John benefit to help him out with living expenses, and have stayed in touch and become friends. That's the worst part of this year's fest. Too many friends make it impossible to actually make it to very many stages to hear music. It's a fair trade.

Last night we went out for Frogs Legs brought back from the Bayou by a New Orleans music legend whose name I can't mention or all his friends will be hitting him up for legs. Jaeger's cooked them up in two giant dishes, along with fried blue catfish roe, and Wardell still managed to get one of my Oysters in a fair trade for a chunk of catfish. I am now officially fat.

After a great night in which we ate the ocean, we hit Rosie's Jazz Hall for Mardi Gras Indians, Willie Tee, and too many others to list because Wardell was not ready to call it a night. I hope I party at 72.

Which is my mom's age and she's achieved a whole new level of color blindness. After telling me about her favorite nurse who is black, and she sometimes calls Mommy, I met the woman who is actually about as German as one can get. Which gives me an imaginary black grandma.

Last night we were talking about musicians in New Orleans and Wardell said the best thing. "In music, I never did worry about who was black or white. And now that I'm blind, everyone's black."

I can't wait to tell Mom!

Coming Home

If you haven't come home for good, you can imagine that you have this week.

We threw a NOMRF musicians' party at Jimmy and Sue Ford's studio / home / work in progress / cabana last night. A rotating roster of New Orleans musicians including Big Chief Alfred Ducette jammed. Crawfish boiled. Shrimp were BBQ'd. The jam got louder and, yes, the police were called. God I miss this place.

If you haven't come home for good, you can imagine that you have this week.

We threw a NOMRF musicians' party at Jimmy and Sue Ford's studio / home / work in progress / cabana last night. A rotating roster of New Orleans musicians including Big Chief Alfred Ducette jammed. Crawfish boiled. Shrimp were BBQ'd. The jam got louder and, yes, the police were called. God I miss this place.

Robin Chambliss was busy with production at Tipitina's and Rickie Castrillo is still displaced in Memphis and his gig this week fell through, but between Sue Ford of Manwitch and John Thomas Griffith of Cowboy Mouth, we had enough of a board meeting to agree to keep giving out grants to displaced musicians as long as individual donations roll in.

Rockers Sue and Jimmy are my touchstone for how to handle hardship with grace. Jimmy was Jeff's former band manager with the dB's and is hosting FordFest at the Three Ring Circus Saturday night.

They threw fund-raising concerts for years and raffled off tickets for Jimmy's Barracuda until there was enough money to construct their own ramped pool. Their sons' muscular ailments are relieved by floating in the salt water.

Jimmy called days after the hurricane to tell us the pool was finally full. Full of fish and other flotsam, but now it's the perfect salt water soak. Musician friends gathered there last night with stories of how their rebuilding is coming along. Food, music, reunions, and friends like this are why we want to come home.

Sue describes it best. "Every time you get in this pool you can feel the love that helped build it."

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.

Amos Lee show in Virginia to benefit NOMRF

The New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund sends grants to assist musicians who are still displaced 19 months after their homes were destroyed. To help address these needs, an Amos Lee benefit on April 27th at James Madison University in Virginia has been booked by Blink of an Eye Productions. The student who founded Blink of an Eye was shaken by the tragedy at Virginia Tech this week, but she is continuing on with the concert and feels it will be an opportunity for healing.

NOMRF Founder Jeff Beninato, who as a teenager played bass on Bourbon Street with both of Fats Domino’s sons, and his wife, writer Karen Dalton Beninato, founded the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund while displaced for months after Hurricane Katrina. The couple eventually went back to retrieve some of their furnishings, with no power in their Mid-City neighborhood and the National Guard patrolling the area at night.

They settled in Illinois, and can empathize with calls from displaced musicians trying to get by. The Fund is collaborating with a home furnishing nonprofit to help musicians starting to move back as more Road Home grants come through. But finding an audience can be a struggle since more than half New Orleans’ population is still gone. Many displaced musicians are trying to get re-established.

"If you're not a band leader, or if you play a style of music New Orleans is not traditionally known for, it takes longer to get your music career going in a new area. These are the musicians who are eligible for help from fewer and fewer outlets," Beninato said.

Through nomrf.org and Exiled on Main Street, they honor displaced musicians including vocalist Timothea Beckerman who died without ever making it home. Beninato lost two friends and former bandmates to the storm.

"Scott Sherman was my competition in junior high school band had one of the best garage bands out of New Orleans, Dr. Spec's Optical Illusions. Playing with him was my last gig before the storm at a Ponderosa Stomp event. As far as anyone knows, he was dropped off on Danziger Bridge and died there."

"And we lost Barry Cowsill, who adopted New Orleans along with his sister Susan, and was a fellow musician and a genius writer. The Partridge Family was based on their life story. So many famous musicians have thrived in this city because they all realize how important New Orleans pop style is to American music,” says Beninato.

NOMRF supporters include Dr. John who played a benefit for Wardell Quezergue in Chicago and surprised Wardell with his Grammy certificate to replace the one he lost to the storm. The grass-roots fund makes donations go further by hiring no professional fund-raisers. “Our help comes from individual music lovers all over the world, “ Karen said, “This summer, musician Joe Topping flew over from Liverpool and walked 1,300 from Chicago to New Orleans in support of the musicians.”

Friends still ask when the Beninatos are moving home. “My parents’ Alzheimer’s disease is progressing so quickly that every day I spend with them has been a gift," Karen says. NOMRF stays plugged in locally with the help of Board Member Robin Chambless, stage manager for this month’s Gambit’s Big Easy Awards (New Orleans' version of the Grammys). Chambless will accept recognition along with other music charities on behalf of the Fund. Board Member John Stirrat of Wilco spearheaded a benefit months after the storm, and Beninato's former bandmate Peter Holsapple of the dB's produced "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" as a benefit download. Holsapple, now touring with Hootie and the Blowfish, lost everything to the storm.

A NOMRF music cruise in January is also on the horizon. One positive aspect to continuing the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund’s work is raising awareness of the ongoing need to help displaced musicians.

Jeff concludes that, “One note from a musician who would not have been able to pay his rent from half way across the country makes it all worth it.”

A Lot of Discussion Dissolving

In his article at the official Google blogspot, John Hanke, the director of Google Maps, has this to say about the Google imagery of New Orleans:

“This weekend, there has been a lot of discussion about our imagery of New Orleans in Google Maps and Google Earth. I thought I'd give you some background that may clear things up, and also let you know about new imagery of the region now available.”

When you click on “a lot of discussion” link you’re directed here:

http://news.google.com/nwshp?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&tab=wn&ncl=1114821833.

And at that site, you're told that “No related articles are found," The articles are in the ether, along with my mid-city neighborhood and the RNC email server. I'm not a conspiracy theorist and rarely wear tinfoil hats, but can't help wondering where 'a lot of discussion' went.

And yes, Google has achieved an admirable mea culpa with its Darfur map, but that does not do any more to bring displaced New Orleaneans back than Oprah’s admirable act of building a school in South Africa.

Created because of her promise to Nelson Mandella, Oprah Winfrey’s African school was promoted on a network special that aired twice in prime time. When asked why she went halfway around the world when the need is so great in cities like New Orleans, Oprah answered that her African students appreciate and value education.

That was before snacks and visitation. Some parents complained that they could only visit their children once a month and that junk food is banned from the school. ActionAid had a bigger concern stating, “Only 150 hand-picked girls from poor households will enroll in Oprah’s boarding school. This number may rise to 400 and there’s no doubt they will receive an excellent education and some will emerge as future leaders. But there are over 40 million girls who have never been inside a classroom.”

There also were more than 300 New Orleans children on a waiting list for public schools at the beginning of this semester. They just sat at home until schools found room for them. Not to make Google and Oprah feel even more like no good deed goes unpunished, but displaced survivors of a man-made disaster are still waiting in America. There should be enough compassion to embrace us all. Anderson Cooper is back in New Orleans, so this week we’re almost as popular as Anna Nicole’s orphan.

But local heartbreak can be too close for comfort. We founded the New Orleans Muscians Relief Fund after evacuating to a town that houses State Farm’s national headquarters. The neon State Farm sign glows above our television screen. So there is a segment of this town that increasingly winces at the words New Orleans, especially with this week’s engineering email disclosures.

Postcards from far away are always easier to live with than a town that could ring your doorbell and ask for a school. Or a map that reflects the hole in its levee.

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.

What's In a Map

Things look different this morning.

I woke up to Google maps showing New Orleans completely intact. No cranes attempting to patch the levees, my mother-in-law's Gentilly home intact, and presumably the palm plants still on my Mid-City balcony.

I live in Illinois now so it's bracing to see the web jump 19 months backwards.

Poor Chikai Ohazama, Google product manager for satellite imagery, had to say in a press release that the change is because of numerous factors - "everything from resolution, to quality, to when the actual imagery was acquired."

The kerfuffle has led to the House Committee on Science and Technology's asking Google Inc. Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt to explain why "Google's use of old imagery appears to be doing the victims of Hurricane Katrina a great injustice by airbrushing history,"

And the story has already taken the spin that "locals smell conspiracy" because officials want to show progress. Who would these local be, and why would our local officials want to show progress that does not exist when they desperately need funding to make it a reality.

The words "New Orleans conspiracy theories" were also edited into the narrative, as if we are downloading maps while sporting tinfoil hats.

Would this gaslighting continue if Google showed -

The Towers Standing

Saddam's Statue Untoppled

Piza's Tower Vertical

Rome and Carthage Unpillaged

The Titanic Afloat

The Superdome without a single paint chip

And almost 3,000 New Orleaneans souls returned to this earth?

I was told about one more New Orleans suicide tonight. These dominoes are falling faster and faster and none of it is reflected in the maps of what is left of our landscape. Psychological or otherwise.

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.