I just ordered a glass of champagne and was given a bowl of assorted snacks in the Lowes Hotel on Poydras. There is a/c, there is WIFI, there are cocktails and food. I’m now a believer that I can survive anything if every once in a while someone gave me some luxuries. A friend is here with her son, Tin’s friend, and they are up in the room jumping on the beds in the a/c.…
About that post that was circulating about life isn’t fair, well it should be. I was walking through the park this morning and listening to Bill Moyers interviewing Anna Deavere Smith about her play she does called Let Me Down Easy where she channels 20 characters from around America and this one about a Charity Hospital doctor during the Federal Flood just hit me like an arrow through the heart.
Yesterday, friends were over and we took a walk about around the lovely bayou. I spoke about our plans for the future, living at the LaLa and then retiring to the Quarter with trips abroad. I confessed to having been a ball of nerves last year because of my anxiety and fear of the future and now I had come to the conclusion that I must be open to any future that arrives. Later on…
This is a familiar refrain in New Orleans – it started raining Friday night and didn’t stop. We set up the umbrellas and plastic gazebo because we decided that rain wasn’t going to stop us from having our Release Party – I mean rain? Water? That is our metaphor, right? We put our shrimp boots on and carried tables, food, and drink out to the bayou and people came carrying more food, more drink, more…
There is a saying that it is easier to bounce back from failure than from success. And if you look at all the celebrities going to hell in a handbasket, there just might be some truth to it. But take New Orleans after the failure of the levees flooded our beloved city – I’ve been very proud of where we have come from there. Now where we’ll go after the oil spill is anyone’s guess.…
Charles and the Garbage Truck route Charles Handler Industrial Organizational Psychologist Charles’ tattoo was not completely Katrina related although he said the event did bind together a lot of themes into one piece of artwork that now spans half of his chest and covers his entire arm like a sleeve. “The decision to cover my whole arm was a big decision and I knew the image should not be arbitrary,” he said. The tattoo is…
I was going to do this book that came up as an idea when I was speaking to my friend Anne at Bacchanal one day after Katrina. It was to do a coffee table book of people who had gotten tattoos to commemorate Katrina. The book did not happen even though it was well intended and I even thought Taschen would be the ideal publisher. Here was the genesis for the book. Start wtih Anne and…
I have been trying not to give into this sort of negative or tumultuous energy that has been in the air but I was speaking to a source of mine and she said, “I’ve never been so busy in my life, it’s exhausting.” Boy, don’t I know it. I wondered out loud if the earth was maybe spinning faster or whether it was my new found 50 years of age that was making everything seem…
As I packed my suitcase last night, trying to think of what I might want to wear three days from now – always a struggle – I thought about the comings and goings around here. We’re travelers, me and T, not vacationers, definitely travelers. While sometimes it is for work and sometimes it is for pleasure, I inherited gypsy blood and my wanderings are what keep me centered rather than the opposite. The pull of…
We had friends over last night who are getting ready to head out of the country for a year and another friend came with them. I was showing him around the house and telling him the blow by blow of how this house came to fruition, except having done this tour before I’ve shortened the lengthy monologue I used to perform. The truth is I earned my bragging rights about this house. I remember when…