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.

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.

A Very Myspace Holiday

It's a very MySpace holiday, with more friends still reachable in the virtual world than with an actual address.

The good news is, there are fewer Christmas cards to send out, which freed up today for watching the Saints kick ass. (Who Dat Download)

As Jeff has gigs this week, we're back from Illinois and camping out in the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund apartment. Musicians who have passed through have helpfully left a roll of wrapping paper, a bible and Bass Player Magazine.

The spirit of Christmas has been alive all year with Dave and Molly Wilson in Baton Rouge. Jeff met Dave 2 years ago working on Walter Williams' Mr. Bill Wetlands Awareness
(Series), and even though our family barely knew them, they offered my in-laws an evacuation location on 8/29.

Five people, two dogs, two birds and a canary were welcomed unconditionally, and as FEMA trailers finally materialized for most of the family, Jeff's mom Gloria, her dog, cat and canary are still in Baton Rouge 16 months later.

As incentive for her to move up to Bloomington, I've sent photos of free sleigh rides in the snow around the town square, the masquerade ball for NOmrf across the street, and free gingerbread house workshops at Kelly's (I've got the Abominable Snowman attacking mine, with a graham cracker peace sign in the back yard), but she's happy in Baton Rouge until the elusive Road Home grants reach our family.

We gave Gloria back the family's antique bedroom set so she and the canary could wake up to something familiar, and Dave has devoted himself to restoring furniture, jewelry and every family photo that was retrievable.

He's worked on so many family photos, he can now pick Jeff's baby picture out of a lineup. And he came up with the idea of putting our family piano photo online as a fund-raiser for musicians.

So the couple who started out as acquaintances are now part of our family.

In this holiday season, as we all wait for our court-ordered FEMA explanation letters of why there will not be renewed rental assistance, it's good to have a reminder of the love and support that is still out there for those who have been blessed enough to find it.

A New Suit

Last night a New Orleans musician friend got so disgusted after a disappointing gig he threw his suit in the garbage. I can't disclose his name, or at future shows fans would be wondering if he's wearing the garbage suit.

His wife fished it out before any real damage was done, but it's an example of the lids about to blow for many musicians struggling to get by during the holidays.

Promises dangle but are not fulfilled. Most international news agencies have closed their local bureaus. The Road Home Program has now distributed a whopping 65 grants out of 88,000 applicants. Many national assistance groups have moved away from giving grants and have moved on to raising awareness.

You can't eat awareness.

Some gigs are sparsely attended as 60 percent of evacuees (depending on which survey you give credence to) are still not back and a third of the returnees are considering moving away. It's almost as if the (_________) is trying to (__________) the city -- insert theory of choice because there are too many to sort through and most of them are probably true.

Not exactly a party atmosphere if you go by the numbers, but the party is still lurking in New Orleans. We just got to town and in late December friends are already talking about Mardi Gras costumes, concerts, and carnival cd releases.

The musicians who have made it home are trying to hang in there until the world's biggest free party comes back to town. And their out-of-town brethren write me about wanting to come back home if rents start to drop.

A.J. Piron's was one of the many jazz greats who made his way from New Orleans to the north in the 1920s. When his band members got tired of the cold and the changes in lifestyle, they voted on whether to go back home.

Piron lost the vote and his band left Harlem in the heyday of jazz. New Orleans music has that kind of pull. And it hasn't thrown away its gig suit just yet.

To help keep the music rolling tonight in Boulder, Henry Butler and friends are hosting a NOmrf benefit for Freddie "Shep "Sheppard" of recent Studio 60 fame. Shep started playing music while still a junior high student in the late 1950s.

He bought his first saxophone coin by coin, with his mother who then worked as a maid, chipping in a dollar for every quarter he earned. The result was a $200 horn from Werlein's Music Store on Canal Street. "It was old and raggedy," he says, "but I didn't know it. It looked so good to me.” Shep now lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Since the year is winding down, I'd like to pay tribute to legends we have lost recently including Timothea Beckerman who I wish I had met sooner, Warren Bell, Sr., Charlie Brent, Marshall Seahorn and Mike Frey, Jr. - the 28 year old bass player killed in the French Quarter on the way home from a gig. All are gone too soon.

The Whole Civilized World

In Which Back Yard Tire Fire Learns Crack Alley

I’ve lived in Bloomington for a year as of today, with no prospects of moving home. It must be harder still to make it back to New Orleans and know you can’t stay unless something changes.

I read in NOLA.com that out of the 40 percent who have come back to New Orleans, 30 percent are considering moving in the next two years. That’s constantly reflected in talks with musician friends. Aside from those whose name recognition and touring have increased post 8/29, they sound more worried with each call. They made it back - but for how long with tourism down and crime up? The Road Home is now up to 65 grants out of the billions they were given to pave it.

There's a chain letter circulating that says 58 percent of Americans do not think New Orleans should be rebuilt. It may be true, but it doesn’t stop the draw of home. A grant recipient just wrote, “I can't tell you how much it means to me to know somebody cares. Since the price of gas heating is so high here in Ky. this will help pay my bill. I want to go home but its hard to find a place to live down there.”

Most of NOmrf’s grants go to musicians you probably never heard of stuck in towns I’ve never heard of. An artist’s manager recently told me backstage that “this is the best thing that’s happened to some of these old timers. They’re getting more famous than they ever were.” He’s wrong. No one was better off in the Astrodome and no one is better off now.

Next week, families from around the country are bringing gift cards and volunteering their time in New Orleans. For the second time, we’ll have a trunk full of instruments from WGLT, the NPR station in Bloomington.

Some musician friends in Back Yard Tire Fire are playing a benefit for the local homeless shelter tomorrow night before we drive south. They learned Barry Cowsill’s “Crack Alley” so my husband Jeff can join them on the song. Barry was Jeff’s bandmate in the Stragglers, and he’s a friend we lost to 8/29. It’s strange to think that Back Yard Tire Fire is keeping Crack Alley alive.

Tomorrow is also Jeff’s birthday and we finally have enough friends here to throw a small pre-show party before walking up the street to the show. The charity had reservations about “Crack Alley” benefiting a homeless shelter, but I think Barry would have enjoyed the juxtaposition. A year ago, the same Salvation Army not only let us gather winter clothes to send home to friends and family, they got a list of everyone’s sizes and helped us fill the basket. Bloomington is supportive that way.

It may be a midwestern legend, but rumor is that we live in the building where Abraham Lincoln was talked into running for the presidency. That’s probably true, because there’s a copper plaque at the antiques mall listing of all his failures. It cost $1,100 so I just committed a few to memory. Apparently you can free the slaves, but there will still be a plaque somewhere about everything you didn’t do.

At the same antiques mall, I bought collectible cards about the San Francisco fire’s aftermath. We were supposed to be furniture shopping, but at least I didn’t buy all the disaster cards. That would have indicated that I’m fixated on disaster. Here’s what some of them said on the back:

“The soldiers are just leaving duty from among the refugees at Ft. Mason and returning to their camp at the Presidio . . . But for the gallant services of the government troops crime and looting would soon have become rampant;

“This structure was one of the finest built by the Y.M.C.A. Organization and like other buildings, whether church, saloon or theatre, had to succumb to Nature’s will;

“The wealthy were on the same level with the lowly once more, for when they fled their palatial homes or houses into the streets, they were almost naked and without money, and as helpless to get away as the poorest beggar. For many days after the catastrophe many well educated ladies could be seen in the parks, dressed in overalls and striped sweaters, or in other coarse masculine garb,” (I ended up in donated pink socks as I only packed sandals, and kept being surprised by my pink feet.);

“With spontaneity and liberality without a parallel in history the whole civilized world answered the unvoiced appeal of ruined San Francisco. Not only from every city, town and hamlet in this country, but from over every sea humanity in its profound sympathy showered material aid upon the stricken city and its beggared people. No more amazing instance of worldwide generosity ever has been recorded.”

The disaster cards made me wish New Orleans still had spontaneity and liberality from the whole civilized world. Or at least the 42 percent who care.

Thanks for Timothea and the Blues

A year ago today I was being kicked out of a FEMA room while running a holiday toy drive for New Orleans musicians' children.

The hotel manager made us bring our credit card down to cover the room, then we headed out to collect toys. My husband called WGN with the story, and by the time we got back the hotel manager tried to get us to stay until March. But we left the next day. Thanksgiving in an Illinois snowstorm.

I was still thankful enough that we had lived through 8/29 and our families were safe and healthy that I wrote a letter to the editor in Lake Forest thanking the people we had met for their hospitality. A realtor later read the letter and offered us a free home for a year.

That was the day after we moved into our current apartment. A glimpse into how my timing's been working out.

A year later, and it's Thanksgiving again. I've heard friends from New Orleans come up with the thinnest excuses for thanks in the last year, the pinnacle was, "I was lucky. Not everything got wet." In the face of that, you lose your capacity not to find room for gratitude.

I'm thankful that my husband wrote a note on the inside door saying, "I am crazy, I am here and I will shoot you" with a stick figure being shot in the head by a giant gun. Then he nailed the door shut from the inside with 2 by 4s. All this seemed excessive at the time, but the neighbors got looted and we didn't.

That's what's hard. Everything you're thankful did not happen to you did happen to loved ones. There is no schadenfreude.

This Thanksgiiving is grim because of jazz siren Timothea. NOmrf had given her grants to get north, then to get further north. I talked with her for a story in the fall, but was waiting until she felt better to finish it.

The last time I talked to her she had just called FEMA asking for help but was told she didn't qualify because she wasn't back in New Orleans yet. She said, "I told him, I'm not back because I got sick. I said, so you're just gonna let me die? He said 'there ain't nothing I can do about it.' He was the meanest man I ever met in my life."

Touring at 12, two kids before the age of 18 and an appearance in "Down By Law," Timothea came by the blues legitimately. She was excited about finishing a new film score. She called to say, "I don't want to die. I'm only 55. I got so much more music in me and this whole great movie score and I'm not just saying it because I wrote it."

She had Hepititis C.

"When I get better, I'll speak and tell you how bad it can get," she said. "Nobody ever told me it can enter your lungs. They won't give me a lung transplant until the liver one. It's just the challenge of living and living calmly."

I talked to her about trying to rest, but probably wasn't much help because we were both crying for most of the conversations.

"I've been an independent woman all my life and I want to continue it. But you can't if you have 10 dozen worries on your mind. I'm homesick like everybody else, but I can't go home. I've got to stay inside. And I don't have portable oxygen anyway." I told her everything would be okay.

Timothea died waiting for her liver transplant. She never did make it home.

Bluesman Bryan Lee came through Bloomington Saturday and we were able to pass along WGLT's replacement amp built for him. We told him about losing Timothea and he played some smoking blues. It helped a little.

I'm thankful for Bryan. I'm thankful that a talent like Timothea was in this world.

But to put it in New Orleans terms, I'm not quite ready for Thanksgiving, me.

Is FEMA Still Paying Your Bills?

When our local Illinois Red Cross volunteer asked me last week, "Is FEMA still paying your bills?" I knew how bad the Katrina preconceptions had gotten.

In the middle of the night, I woke up and thought of changing the definition to 8/29 for another chance to open the dialogue as an evacuee. The RE-Define 8/29 campaign attempts to open a new dialogue about the flood's after-effects, without the negative associations that have started to follow those of us who are still displaced.

It's about redefining what it feels like to still be far from home with no return in sight.

Hundreds of the musicians our grass-roots charity, the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund (www.nomrf.org) helps are now located in towns where their music is largely unknown. Many of our grants go to Houston where New Orleans musicians who had nothing to do with the rise in crime have been labeled "Katricians." Texas alone has absorbed a quarter of a million New Orleaneans who have no home to return to. Georgia houses another 100,000.

We're working to RE-define 8/29 by changing the dialogue about the biggest forced migration since the Dust Bowl. Our definition of 8/29, 2005 is that it was the last day most displaced New Orleaneans could go home.

The RE-Define 8/29 campaign is also about dropping preconceptions of Katrina victims buying designer purses with their FEMA money. It's about displaced musicians needing NOmrf grants to quite literally survive. They still face problems including lack of proper health care and not making enough money to support their families. Many are still trying to replace their gear and CD merchandise.

The national media has passed us by. That's why re-framing the language and letting go of Katrina preconceptions is a start in helping the musicians who have not made it home.

Eighty thousand families in Louisiana are still living in FEMA trailers. Not enough low income housing is available in New Orleans for most musicians to return. NOmrf offers an apartment for returning musicians on a rotating basis, but we would like to offer more.

Barriers to coming home include the fact that the $10.4 billion Road Home CDBG program does not apply to renters. Out of the 77,000 homeowners who applied for the CDBG funds, 28 people have received grants. Amnesty International USA is campaigning against the demolition of viable low-income housing.

Re-Define 8/29 is about emphasizing the need for safeguarding the musicians who do make it back to New Orleans. When a 28-year old bass player was shot and killed on his way home from a French Quarter gig, his father asked that donations be made in his memory to help other musicians.

"What Becomes of the Brokenhearted by the dB's, my husband¹s old band, is the official download for the campaign. (www.thedbsonline.net).

Anyone interested can help RE-Define 8/29 by making NOmrf part of your holiday purchases. A year in the making, we finally have merchandise. Everything from a RE-Define 8/29 Beer Stein to prints of what remains of my mother-in-law¹s family piano. (www.cafepress.com/nomrf).

Top 10 of the Displaced Year

The month before Katrina I quit my job, totaled my car and the cat died.

There are hundreds of thousands of Katrina exile stories and that's the start of mine. The day before the levees broke I was visiting family on a week-long vacation when it became apparent that my husband and I weren’t going home any time soon. After cashing out the 401K, we stayed out on the road for four months bouncing between family, friends and FEMA rooms.

We went on morning shows across the country talking about displaced New Orleaneans and I sang a version of “It’s Raining,” that I would not want Irma to hear. Ever. But it seemed to get the point across. We downloaded some of the thousands of digital photos from home as background - I didn’t have any photos of the wreckage until we came back.

As we received text messages from our musician friends around the country, Jeff and I founded the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund, Inc. The 501c(3) tax-deductibility was achieved between Starbucks internet connections and many, many e-faxes. It came through just as Wilco did a fund-raiser in Chicago and NOMRF was able to start sending out cost of living grants to displaced musicians. NOMRF has sent out hundreds of grants so far and may go out in a blaze of glory if donations dry up, but for now people around the world are still reaching out.

Being displaced ourselves made for strange interviews - whenever a reporter asked when we were going home, we would turn to each other and start to discuss it. A woman I had never met put us up in Milwaukee for weeks – she left a welcome sign, a bottle of wine and three cats. One was a jerk but it was a cozy place to stay and the scratches have healed.

My brother and sister-in-law put us up in a nicely furnished basement room. At the time they had a bald cat in an orange polka dotted sweater that seemed to run a temperature of 200. She may have had intestinal problems and after each noxious smell everyone would yell “Wendy!” My other brother would drop $50 dollar bills and say they were mine because he’s too polite to offer a loan. I wouldn’t have survived without them.

A commune on Martha’s Vineyard put us up while we went on the Plum TV Network. They kept telling us they weren’t a commune but the communal living indicated otherwise. I didn’t care for the draft from the compost toilet but it is good for the environment. They were very, very kind people as many across the country were at the time. I was looking for a new home.

At one point I called a woman from a housing web site who was offering a 1950’s Winnebego in Maine. Her grandfather had rented it to his tenant for 60 years at $100 a month. “And if you don’t like vegetables just ignore them because grandpa will leave them on your doorstep no matter what. The cows will probably poke their heads in the windows but they’re just curious. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”

I was intrigued, but we passed on the farm.

I barely consider myself displaced because we’re home so much, but we did rent an apartment in Bloomington, Illinois because there were no other affordable options in December and I was tired of not getting mail. Our apartment faces a giant courthouse dome with a statue of Lincoln. He sits on a bench and you can lean against him and relax. Sometimes people dress him up and that makes me more homesick than anything else.

The town is throwing NOMRF a Halloween Masquerade and putting beads around the courthouse so that’s encouraging. They have a giant No Racism sign as you drive into town and another one as you drive out in case you forget not to be racist.

And it’s good to be near my father who’s battling Alzheimer’s. Some days I’m his favorite daughter and some days I’m his favorite niece, but so far I’m still the favorite.

We’ve come back to New Orleans for a toy drive, the Anti-Versary, to welcome Joe Topping who walked from Chicago, Jazzfest, Mardi Gras, instrument drive, basically at the drop of a hat. My brother’s hint for making new friends here is “Stop talking about New Orleans.”

Fat chance.

Man on Fire

Man on Fire

My best friend called to tell me her husband is the executor for Malachi Ritscher, the Chicago musician who set himself on fire to protest the war in Iraq.

She and Bruno received the keys to Malachi’s home in the mail on the same day he immolated himself beside the Kennedy Expressway during rush hour. Next to him was a small handmade sign that said “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” By the time they got the note, Malachi was already dead.

I’ll see them tomorrow and hear stories about their friend. Adrienne’s the one who talked me into moving to New Orleans in the first place, and they found us a place to stay in Milwaukee for a month last fall. When she called to tell me the story, it felt incongruis. Like you can be geographically separated from tragedy.

I can't know Malachi’s inner turmoil or mental illness enough to have the right to judge, but part of me is angry with him for a) not waiting until after the election in case it made a difference to him, and b) giving up on life when it’s still a daily struggle for so many New Orleaneans.

Last month a jazz legend NOMRF helped get to Long Island for medical treatment called to tell me, “I don’t want to die. I’m only 75 and I got so much more music in me.”

Malachi was a true lover of music. He was known for giving artists tapes of their shows. Many of his recordings were eventually released commercially as a favor to jazz groups who couldn’t afford studio time. Bruno now has the task of archiving tapes from more than two thousand concerts. He owns a jazz label and is generous with his time so Malachi made a good choice.

Aside from the political statements in Malachi’s self-written obituary, this is how he described himself:

“One of his proudest achievements was an ultra-searing hot sauce recipe, which he registered under the name 'Undead Sauce - re-animate yourself!' It was a blend of tropical peppers, which he grew indoors in 5-gallon buckets, and a few secret ingredients that gave it a unique flavor (pomegranate, pistachio, and cinnamon).

He was a collector of several things: books, records, meteorites, butterfly knives, keris, glass eyes, fossil tully monsters, microphones, medium-base lightbulbs, and instruments, especially snare drums.

He could shave with a straight razor. He loved cinnamon rolls.

His favorite joke was to walk into a room, sniff the air, and observe "it smells like snot in here".

The handwritten manuscript of his 'fictional autobiography', titled "Farewell Tour", was under consideration by publishers. It had a general theme of shared universal aloneness, and was controversial for seeming to endorse suicide after the age of fifty.

He was deeply appreciative for everything that had been given to him, but acutely aware that the greater the present, the higher the price.

Reportedly, his last words were "rosebud... oops". “

When you’re compelled to be that funny in your obituary, it seems you deserve to be where they second line to celebrate your life. I wonder if he would have made it in a town that can absorb mania so gently that sometimes you can forget you’re crazy. He was a member of AA and Mensa.

His self-penned suicide note is less slapstick.

“What does God want? No big mystery - simply that we try to help each other. We decide to make God-like decisions, rescuing falling sparrows, or putting the poor things out of their misery. Tolerance, giving, acceptance, forgiveness.

If this sounds a lot like pop psychology, that is my exact goal. Never underestimate the value of a pep-talk and a pat on the ass. That is basically all we give to our brave soldiers heading over to Iraq, and more than they receive when they return. I want to state these ideas in their simplest form, reducing all complexity, because each of us has to find our own answers anyway. Start from here...”

He ends, being an Illinois boy, with this quote:

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government... " - Abraham Lincoln

These were his last written words:

“Without fear I go now to God - your future is what you will choose today.”

Rest in peace, Malachi, and please look up the friends we lost in the last 2 years to drowning, illness, suicide and heartbreak. They are all gone too soon.

"What Becomes of the Broken Hearted" (Benefit song by the dB's)

Six Degrees of Jangle Separation

For all of us who worship REM like gods, there's one more reason to.

Our friend Mike Mills came to jam with the
"New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund All-Stars" James Andrews, Stanton Moore and Craig Klein this summer at Dr. John's benefit for Wardell Quezergue, and he's catching up with them at the Future of Music Coalition gathering this week.

Bass player John Stirrat of Wilco, a NOMRF board member, was also hanging out at our Chicago benefit along with bass player Jeff Beninato, my husband and NOMRF co-founder. Jeff's former alternative band the dB's toured with Mike and REM when they were label-mates. (Photo of Bass Summit above.) I ditched them all in the green room, as it seemed like a good chance for a bass players only conversation.

Speaking of dB's members, Peter Holsapple, now also with Hootie and the Blowfish, just came back to town to help gut former Continental Drifter bandmate Mark Walton's home with Craig Klein's Arabi Wrecking Krewe. Peter lived in Arabi and has relocated to North Carolina with his family.

Yet another dB's member, Will Rigby, is the drummer for Steve Earle who's in town with the FMC. The dB's recorded "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted" (click here) as a download, and it's an amazing version as well as being NOMRF's only merch.

The dB's are described in the Rolling Stone's Alt-Rock-A-Rama history of rock and roll volume in Peter's essay, "The dB's - What Happened?"

It includes how their song about a suicidal teen was pulled from MTV following a rash of unrelated Texas suicides; How record label owner Albert Grossman, former manager of Bob Dylan, died aboard a plane while holding their contract which would have released them to move to a bigger label. It was unsigned. Their potential hit single was the right sleeve but the wrong song - Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes was inadvertantly inserted instead. Peter's essay explaining all of this is one of the classic pieces of rock and roll literature. The original band reunited last year. These guys are troupers.

Jeff and Mike Mills have stayed in touch since the dB's days, and he got the full New Orleans experience while he was in town. Mike went on a tour of the devastation with the Jon from FMC and Craig from the Wrecking Crewe. Today Jon's visiting Wardell and bring him his monthly NOMRF grant from the Dr. John show.

He's lucky to get to hang out with Wardell who told me when I was moping about missing all the rock: "Like they say Karen, sometimes it be's that way."

Even from up in Illinois, NOMRF was well represented all weekend by Board Member Robin Chambless, the city's best stage production coordinator who worked in the time after Voodoo Fest and before Comic Relief.

And it's great to know godfathers of alternative roots music like REM and the dB's and their successors like Wilco are still looking after their Crescent City brethren.