Instead of getting up at the butt crack of dawn as my friend Flower calls it (read: 4:30am) and making tea and Tin’s lunch and then getting in the car to drive him to school in New Orleans and then hustling to make a living and make the events at the Hall happen, I am getting up at 7:30 now. Tin has his morning meeting with his class online and then begins his 2-3 hours…
There are a handful of homeschool collectives in New Orleans, and there have been smaller groups focused on African American children. A friend of mine, who teaches at Newman, has three children who are all A+ students. Her eldest child told me that the ones to fear in the Academic Games are the homeschooled African American kids. I’ve thought very seriously about home school for Tin. He now goes to a school that began with…
Yesterday, I went to New Orleans to pick up Tin and was surprised by how many people were out and about. City Park was chock a block full of blankets with more than a few people on each one. I went to the feed store to get Stella’s food and kept trying to walk down the aisle alone, but this woman had come in and kept popping up and I was desperately trying to avoid…
My friend wanted to adopt a dog – she’s been wanting this for some time now and it just so happens she found one during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown. So I met her at the owner’s house to see about this dog. The subdivision was a gated community with cookie cutter mansions each with a green lawn and a concrete driveway. Except for a slight alteration in style, you’d never know which house was yours.…
There is a rumor that Buddha said all life is struggle, but that is not what he meant. We struggle when we don’t accept what is. We struggle to change it, we struggle to wrest meaning out of it, we struggle to overcome it, and we struggle to not let what is change us. I self soothe at night by thinking of all the many splendor things that I’m lucky to have – shelter, food,…
Today the 100 Men Hall was going to have the most magnificent St. Joseph Altar. Months ago we met to make the cuccidati: There were multiple baking days of Italian cookies with Linda Belou and friends, a beautiful label designed by Ann Madden, and lucky fava beans bought at Central Grocery in New Orleans – we have pounds of them! We were so excited about the altar – alas, COVID-19 isolation made it impossible. In…
I’m watching Ava Duvernay’s When They See Us. It’s a tough one. Tin and I watched the first episode together and I realized it was too much for him; it is too much for me. There is a scene where the family is visiting one of the boys and the mom tells him he needs to have something to look forward to and I paused – huh? – something to look forward to? What do…
I moved to Bay Saint Louis in July 2018 because I wanted to leave New Orleans. I was in a bad relationship with the city. I remember driving back and forth between Bay Saint Louis and New Orleans and the thought of moving three blocks from the beach sounded perfect. My friend Laurie said, “Of course it sounds perfect. Everyone wants to live on the beach. But you don’t live on the beach, you vacation…
I began writing this blog one year before the beginning of the end. It was 2004, and I had gone to New Orleans from San Rafael to be near my mother, whose health was spiraling downward. My friend needed a dog and house sitter for the summer, and it proved the perfect respite from my too busy life in the Bay Area. I would walk to the dog park every morning by Cabrini and meet…
I’m writing in fragments on so many platforms, it’s hard to consolidate all that is happening. This is an interview I did with Philip Levin on Meet the Authors that talks about The Writing Room at the 100 Men Hall. This is a benevolent society, 100 WOMEN DBA I have launched this year at the 100 Men Hall. This is an article about me and my new chapter as owner of the 100 Men Hall.…