A friend told me that on a recent visit to New York, the shops had less holiday decorations, there were few people on the streets, and that overall the Big Apple looked bleak. I was walking this particularly beautiful morning along the entrance to City Park. The street that leads to New Orleans Museum of Art or NOMA (if we might be so hip to call it) and I was looking at the stands of…
My brother called today to tell me he is going to be a grandfather – the family keeps expanding – just my immediate family is 11 nieces and nephews, 5 great nieces and nephews, 2 great twin nephews enroute, and one gender unknown now on the way. Counting the child we adopt – wow, that’s a lot of kids. My family is having its own little population explosion. Also, my brother mentioned his business is…
Arlene now sleeps in our bathroom with the door closed. This keeps her pacing to a much smaller venue. Inevitably, she wedges herself between the toilet and the wall – the evidence of her there is the nose line along the white wall. This morning she got underneath the stool and dragged it clanging and scraping the hard floors. What possesses a dog to wedge into a corner, to pace endlessly, to drink maniacally? For…
We drove Loca out to the lakefront yesterday morning and walked from one end to the other. There was hardly a soul out there. It has been sparse since Katrina but it was almost dead on such a beautiful day. Loca romped up and down and tried to climb down the slippery algae steps into the lake while pelicans in a group of five sailed by, and coots and cormorants hung out near the shore.…
I was driving down the I-10 the other day and was looking at the billboards along the highway as I cover out of home advertising and was noticing a lot of blank boards. Then I saw Lamarque Ford’s ad and thought wow, Ronnie Lamarque got old. Which of course means, I got old. Ronnie’s hair is almost snow white, while mine remains semi-naturally red. Hey Ronnie, I’m bridging the gap with hair color!
As Loca and I rounded the Marconi side of the park, I saw the familiar inscription on a concrete pad by the lagoon – WPA 1936 – 1937. Obama is calling for a public works project the likes we haven’t seen since the highways were laid, but I’d say more like since the WPA set out to build infrastructure across this great country. What I’d like to tell O is to start here because W…
Carmac would hold the envelope to his head and say what the question was, before opening the answer. Last night, a woman said her breast cancer has moved to her lymph nodes, stage 2. I reached out my hand to touch her on instinct, although I barely knew her. This morning, Obama said in so many words, the country is sick (we knew that) and it is going to get worse before it gets better…
Yesterday evening as the balloons were set free in the party and floated to the ceiling, one person came this close * to getting over the blues. And later in the evening when we went to the annual Prohibition party, a few of us were able to let our hair down the way we haven’t in a while. Mom was on the mend by yesterday evening, up and about the apartment and did not spend…
It seems like you can’t turn on the news or pick up any magazine without talk of the recessions or the depression or whatever we are going to call this period in time. I was coming out of the parking lot of Party City on Veterans in Metairie, where I had to go to get the balloons yesterday, and there was a car with a bumper sticker that said “Geaux McCain!” – a Louisiana stamp…
I was feeling a little low about life – about working so hard and always the brass ring seems to move further and further out ahead of me. About not being able to do anything for my mother who spent the last week in her bed 24/7 because she was feeling weak (and scared). I brought mom groceries yesterday and was full of good advice about how she could feel better, but then I left…