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No dearth of grim news

Unemployment at 4-year high Not since 2004 have so many people been out of work. Employers cut jobs again in July, according to a government report Friday that showed the seventh straight month of job losses. Losses spread far beyond the battered construction and auto industries. Retailers cut 17,000 jobs, and professional services lost even more than that — 24,000 positions.

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Families – Real or Not

I moved back to New Orleans in 2005 because I wanted to be by my family. I wanted kids in my life. I wanted to be an aunt, a sister, a daughter. Well, who knows what went wrong with the equation but it’s been good being here with my mom, although whose to say I’m a good daughter. I told J the other day my sole purpose in my mom’s life is to entertain as…

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Good grief!

I ran out for a minute to fedex Flower’s birthday gift and on the way home I clipped a car as I tried to turn left and turned into her because she was in my blindspot. Of course this happened in front of the Green Market and everyone and their mother. So a friend runs over to see if I am okay, but the woman is cursing me under her breath because the hit wasn’t…

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The rain is on time this morning

It’s 9ish and as if on cue this week, the sky is black and is pouring. Oh, but yesterday, when the temperature had finally dropped a little, I took my bike out to the lake for a sunset ride and oh my, I forgot how beautiful the lake can be at this hour. A regatta of boats with brightly colored spinnakers moved across the sparkling lake with the sun setting behind them. Sea birds flew…

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There is a woman

Sitting in an internet cafe on the island of Vis in Croatia on Thursday morning – it’s hot outside and the woman is an hour away from plunging into the cool, refreshing waters of the Adriatic. When she is swimming underwater with her goggles, her thoughts will be on the cicadas song and the fat, juicy tomato that awaits her lunch under a pine tree. She’ll come out of the water and dry herself on…

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The malaise of summer

Everyone thinks of summer and the activities that correspond – licking ice cream cones, swimming, boats, vacations. Well, make no mistake – summer’s biggest activity is non-activity because it is so hot – and in New Orleans every day is a dog day. This week is an inverse of last week. Last week, we got up every morning and by seven o’clock you couldn’t breathe because the humidity and heat were so high but by…

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MardiGras.com

I have a lot of friends who have signed up for match.com or nerve.com. The way it works is you post a bio, a pic, and select some criteria from pre conceived notions. Then you sift through the flotsam of people seeking the same things as you while you float across countless the radar of unknowns. After which the emailing begins – Hi, I saw your photo on Match/Nerve/J-date and … – ping pong –…

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