Who Needs Mad Men?

I read an article in The Guardian today about how people are idealizing the 1950s because of the TV series Mad Men, but also forgetting what it was like to be a woman in that era. A couple of things make me think that while Louisiana exists in the universe of 2012, we haven't actually made it out of a much earlier time in history -- at least as it relates to the status of women.
Over a year ago, when I was really struggling financially and trying to figure out what to do in terms of work, one of my roommates, Margaret, laid things out for me really clearly. "You can be a teacher or a nurse if you want to stay in New Orleans." Margaret opted for the teaching path. One of my previous roommates had chosen nursing.
I recognize that given the attacks on women's healthcare across the country, this maybe should not be such a surprise. And, as you all know, I have (so far at least) chosen not to go down either the teaching or the nursing roads, taking, if you will, the one less traveled.
Still, the fact that this is the reality facing educated women in this town is pretty appalling. It also doesn't help that a bill that would have mandated that state and local government entities pay women and men the same rate was killed by an all-male labor and industrial relations committee. Maybe they don't understand what it means to be a working woman in a state that consistently ranks 49th or 50th nationally in terms of pay disparity between men and women. I'm guessing that they don't.
Women in Louisiana on average make 67 cents for every dollar a man earns. African-American women make only 48 cents for every dollar a White man earns.It's sad that a bill mandating the government pay its own employees equally regardless of gender can't make it out of committee. It's worse that for so many, the question of equal pay is a non-issue.

Funeral

Saturday morning I got up at 7:30 to get to a funeral for 9am. It was for a friend's older brother, Timothy Willie Russell. He was 32 and a father of 2. Later that morning another funeral was being held for their cousin who was killed at the same time. They were shot to death in a car in the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood of Holy Cross about 10 days ago, late at night during a tremendous thunderstorm.
This was the first time that someone close enough to me to feel had been affected by a murder. And I did feel it. I was like a water faucet during the funeral, gushing tears on and off.
It was also the first time that I'd attended a funeral with such a packed house, or for such a young person, and I'd never seen young Black men in too-big pants crying and holding their loved ones like I saw at this funeral.
But this scene is all-too common in this city. Young Black men in particular are killed regularly. Since the start of the year, the police have killed 3. And then there are the shootings that aren't done by the police.
What was interesting to me was the fact that nothing changed about my feelings for the city. I just thought that this has to stop, and I should probably do something. It's a complex problem because certainly the lack of jobs that will support a family plays a part in this, just as, I suspect, all the untreated post-traumatic stress related to Katrina does, too. On top of that, there are plenty of guns around.
Is this happening in other cities around the country? Are the young being culled, leaving just an older generation?

Sounds of Brighton

I've been in Brighton for a little over a month now, and I produced this audio slide show just to give folks a sense of what it's like here. Just click on the link below. Cheers.

Sounds of Brighton

Cross-Country

Friday morning started early, the way many Fridays have recently, so that I could get to WTUL for the 8am News & Views show. This time, however, I was going in a car packed to the gills with stuff instead of on my bicycle, sweating up Baronne from the Bywater. As I pulled away from Tulane after the show, I pointed the car North towards St. Francisville, LA. I'm working on a story about prison gerrymandering for New America Media, so I wanted to go check out the town that I would be talking about in this piece. The whole population of the place is about 1500 people, and it's not far from an enormous prison, Angola, which raises questions about representation for the prisoners as well as the distribution of state and federal resources.
I decided to interview the woman who runs the town's Main Street organization, that is, the entity that works to promote business and economic development. It was a good conversation that went on for a fair bit after the interview ended. She understood the implications of the questions, and this prompted a talk about larger economic and political issues.
Prior to leaving the house in the morning, I'd finished packing up the car, and I'd taken 2 strands of glass mardi gras beads off a peg in the wall where they'd been hanging since I caught them at Krewe de Vieux last year. It was sunny and hot in St. Francisville, and I didn't want to wear the beads since they just felt heavy, so they are now dangling from my car's rearview mirror.
From St. Francisville, I followed the town's tourist map and my own common sense to Tunica Falls or The Clark Creek Natural Area, passing on my way the "World Famous Pond Store," named for the town of Pond, MS. In the store I asked how to get to Tuscaloosa, AL, and the woman I presume to be the owner laughed at how I could manage to get so lost. Still, one of the guys who was fixing her refrigerated display case gave me good directions, and got me on my way again.
As I sped towards Tuscaloosa, my goal stopping place for the first night, I realized as I left the Bienville Forest that I was on empty, and I pulled into the next town, Lake, MS. Hard as this may be to believe, I was not actually trying to hop scotch my way across Mississippi from one water-named town to another.
Anyway, I pulled over as soon as I got off the highway hoping that I would be able to get directions to the closest gas station. A white pickup truck was pulling up to a gate, and a little, blonde girl rolled down the passenger window when I walked up. The family in the truck went above the call of duty to help me find it by leading the way for me. And in the gas station, people were helpful again when I asked how far it was to Tuscaloosa.
In Tuscaloosa, my journey introduced me to another good person. I had dinner in a chain restaurant, and the manager happened to bring out my main course. We ended up striking up a conversation, and Harvey sat down to join me. The topics ranged from the existential issues that prevent people from finding love to the lack of African-American history taught in school. I feel like I made another friend, and it was another pleasant meeting in an unexpected situation.

My second day of driving took me from Alabama and to the Northeastern edge of Tennessee, and let me just say that, at least from the highway, Chattanooga is gorgeous. The highlight of this day was meeting my friend, Ben Varadi, for lunch in a little town called Loudon, TN. Ben is running his own law practice, so we haven't seen much of each other in New Orleans, and it's funny that we were able to meet for a leisurely lunch as we drove in opposite directions between NOLA and DC. Loudon was intriguing to me because it very clearly had a Latino population, and while I know that there are immigrant communities across the country, it was still interesting to me to see that in this tiny Tennessee town.
Ben lent me his tent so that I could camp out that second night, and sent me off up highway 75.
Yesterday morning, after a reasonable night in a state park, I was on the road before 8:30am. Shortly after crossing the border into Virginia, Smooth by Carlos Santana came on the radio and had me rocking out. Not so much that I didn't notice the pale blue cornflowers lining the road, though. And when I finally arrived in Annapolis much later that day, I was just in time to help my brother and sister-in-law move some of the last stuff out of their old house and into their new one.

Happy Mardi Gras!

It's Mardi Gras season, so it's hard to get much done around here right now. Most people are working on their costumes for the big day or hanging out with friends diving for beads at parades. It's amazing to me what a family and community-oriented event Mardi Gras is. Before living here, I thought that Mardi Gras was that gross thing of drunks and women flashing their breasts on Bourbon Street. That happens, too, trust me, but only on Bourbon Street. The parades that roll down St. Charles Avenue and along Canal Street are attended by families and children of all ages.
One of the devices I particularly like are wide viewing ladders that people set up so that the kids can sit above the crowd and see the floats --- and be strategically positioned to catch "throws." These ladders are generally about 3 feet wide, and they have a board across the top (between side railings) for sitting. The structures are positioned along the neutral ground, and they're an excellent tool for parade watching.
Yesterday, my friend Liz Lew and I went to see the NOMTOC parade, New Orleans Most Talked About Club, in Algiers. It was fun, although truly long and slow. We were fortunate to have a rooftop spot, so we had a pretty good view of all the bands and floats, but the power lines did deflect a large number of the beads and other throws hurled our way.
It started to rain during the parade, so we moved inside. At a certain point, since Liz wanted to get a printer cartridge, and I wanted to go to another friend's pre-parade brunch, we headed off on our bikes for the ferry. The rain, however, hadn't actually stopped.
So, we got to the ferry and hid under the walkway until it arrived. Unfortunately, at the same time, the rain grew more intense, turning the Mississippi River into a mist-covered, swirling expanse with more droplet-induced freckles than a tub in a shower.
When we reached the other side, I gave up on the idea of going to Liz's to do some porch sitting and have dinner, and I decided to strike out for home.
My glasses, which were covered with rain drops, were not particularly helpful, and the fact that the streets were flooded was also not encouraging. A clanging noise frightened me as a I approached St. Peters from Canal Street. It was a manhole cover that had come out of its rim and was bouncing up and down as water gushed out from the sewer. This was the first time I saw one of these on the way home, but not the last. This scary thing, however, was juxtaposed with the brassy call of a marching band that continued to wind it's way along Canal Street, in spite of the torrential rain.
Although the rain was pretty warm, I thought about what it must be like to go through a hurricane. No fun. I pedaled along at a pretty steady pace, but the water on the edge of the street would come up to the middle of my tire. Clearly the road sloped down from the middle, so I tried to stay as close to the high part as possible while leaving room for the cars that were also trying to get through.
One advantage to being on a bike in this, I have to say, was the knowledge that the water wasn't going to flood my engine.
Oh, I should mention that the garlands of Mardi Gras beads that I had collected at NOMTOC added an oddly cute clinking sound to this whole scene.
While I did manage to stay up long enough to peel off the beads and water-logged clothes to take a hot shower, I did completely crash into a long, afternoon nap, which, I guess, is part of what this whole Mardi Gras thing is supposed to be about.

Multi-Sensorial

This afternoon I went to Chioggia, a small fishing village on the edge of Venice's lagoon. As I walked around, I wished that there were a way to share the smell. Everyone is familiar with pictures of Venice. The canals and gondolas are famous. People have even seen what it looks like in winter: gray, foggy, damp. But Venice smells. More in summer than in winter, but still, it has a smell. Chioggia does, too. Chioggia smelled like salt water and fish, which, given its main industry, isn't really surprising.
Maybe I'll write more about this at some point, but it has been on my mind lately that even with multi-media presentations, we still don't have a way to share the way a place smells.

Thinking About Options

I've been reading lately about the fiscal crises in Europe: Greece, Ireland, Portugal. I've also been reading about the austerity packages that the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been putting together for these counties. Dean Baker, an economist, gives a great explanation of what is happening to Ireland here. The short version is: bankers fucked things up and now regular working people have to pay.
Sound familiar? The Irish, like the Greeks, have mounted tremendous protests. The thing I'm thinking about, though, is that street protests aren't going to change anything. At this point, I'm not sure that even a new election in Ireland will change things since the agreement will be in force before a new government can come to power. Although one can hope that they would do something like refuse to pay high interest rates on IMF loans.
The thing is, these multilateral financial institutions have tremendous power. In the US we don't see it so much because we have our own private banking sector that runs everything. And so the question on my mind is: what can be done to really effectively protest and create change?
Sure, creating more credit unions is one thing. Real strikes would be another. When the Sarkozy government recently proposed an increase in the retirement age, people of all ages across France shut the country down for days putting a real wrench into the economic machine. Could something like that happen here in the US? I'd like to see it, but I'm not holding my breath. Much as it disappoints me, I'm not sure how far people are willing to go even when it comes to being groped by TSA officers at airports. Yet, really, it is only through organized action and civil disobedience, as well as implementing real alternatives, that we can expect any change here in the US.