I spoke with a furloughed government employee yesterday who said that last time this happened – with Gingrich and Clinton – that salaries were actually restored to furloughed employees. Really? I said, somewhat vexed that now with the debt crisis we would be paying for an extended vacation of government employees. It’s not that I don’t sympathize with them not getting a paycheck but since I work for myself, and I never got to even…
I moved down the street from First Grace, a church that brought together a white and black congregation after the 2005 Federal Flood and has the best marquee in town. I’ve been isolated in my head too much lately and I desire community. When I started working at Off the Record in 1999, I met people I admired and enjoyed and they made work seem like a nonstop party. Then some of those people left,…
My maiden name is Namer, which means Tiger in English. It’s a Sephardic name. So when people tell me I’m strong, I have to remember where my roots are – I’m a tiger by birth. I’m coming down off a weekend in the life of the mother of a four and a half year old – we started with a playdate in Destrehan – stopped first at the grocery to pick up balloons but Tin…
I’ve been walking around the bayou these days with Heidi – a dog is always a great motivator for taking long walks. The bayou has been beautiful as of late, the weather one to two degrees north of Africa hot and the sky blue and filled with puffy clouds as if it were summer. We head from our new house down the neutral ground and hit the mouth of the bayou where there seems to…
I was speaking to a friend today at the grocery store, he said to me during his darkest moments of bipolar-induced schizophrenia and about to lose his over two-decade career, he called out to God and said, “I’m Joe, God, not Job. Joe. Not Job.” I had just told him that God must be bored with me again, dangling lightning between my eyes, just seeing if I would snap. So I say, “I’m Rachel, God,…
Someone sent me a link to the Flow Market that provides immaterial things to a needy public. This morning I woke from yet another restless night of sleep – my thoughts are running rampant, what if, what would, what should? All night long. I went to sleep reading Inward Revolution: Bringing About Radical Change in the World by Jiddu Krishnamurti. The book is yet another and ever present reminder in my life to stay in…
I’m obsessed with elephants – well yes I am – the collection of elephants in my house should be a hint. After spending time at the Riddle’s Elephant Sanctuary in Arkansas in 2006, I realized up close and personal that there is absolutely no way to anthropomorphize an animal the size of a building. There is nothing cute and cuddly about a prickly skinned animal who could care less if your bones are crunchable. And…
“People don’t live in New Orleans because it is easy. They live here because they are incapable of living anywhere else in just the same way.” ~ Ian McNulty, A Season of Night: New Orleans Life After Katrina
I’ve been pretty upset about this Food Stamp debacle that Congress has presented to us. I can’t imagine what would go on in anyone’s head that would think at a time when this country cannot feed all of its children – 22% live below the poverty line – that it would even consider cutting $40 billion out of this program. I spent the morning sending a tweet to each of the 271 Republicans who voted…
Tonight Wonder Woman decided for the umpteenth time in months that she was not going out. Instead she stayed home and finished the last episode of Scandal that ended with a Darth Vader-esque moment. Then she picked up her book and read. I am not sure why I [read: Wonder Woman] have become so un-super-hero-like these days – it could have something to do with not drinking – I mean I was supposed to go…