The city stinks!

Anyone keeping up with local news will know by now that the New Orleans-area Mississippi River endured a fuel spill today when two boats crashed into each other. I’ll put up some links on that story tomorrow, but would like to mention that tonight, when I went out for my evening walk, the air smelled — and tasted — like creosote. It was vile, and it burned. Our evening news reports assured us that air and water quality checks were being conducted but that, in Orleans parish at least, water intakes were still operating, so our water was safe to drink. It was a different story on the other side of the river, where people were encouraged to ration water while their intakes were switched off and emergency water supplies were used instead. Poor New Orleans and south Louisiana. Even if this turns out to be a minor-not-quite-disaster, it’s still been frightening enough. I stayed indoors all day but can believe that anyone who had to work outdoors is probably suffering a massive headache (and perhaps sore throat) tonight.

FEMA seeks immunity from suits over trailer fumes

Now, FEMA is arguing that their distribution of poisonous trailers is protected from “legal second-guessing,” and they cannot legally be sued by any Katrina victims who were provided with dangerous housing after the storm. AP story can be viewed by clicking here.

HOW Did I Miss This??

Girls’ roller derby has to be the coolest sport around, and I’ve known for ages that I really need to get into the Big Easy Roller Girls, but because I’ve been lazy about checking them out, I missed what sounds like one of the most fantastic non-Carnival events to happen in the Quarter all year: San Fermin en Nueva Orleans, with roller derby skaters dressed as bulls and chasing local people through Bourbon Street in our own local reenactment of Pamplona. It happened this year on Saturday, July 12, a day when I was mostly reading and napping with my cat. Argh. Next year, I’ll be sure to be in attendance…

A roller girl/bull wields her bat with flourish. The guy on her right really, really seems to be enjoying the chase.

Heat.

Humidity today was much, much lower, so it wasn’t so difficult to breathe while outdoors as it has been, yet I had the strangest sensation upon leaving a Turkish cafe on St. Charles, where I’ve been going lately to read. For a few seconds, everything felt early December, pre-Christmas, I’m-waiting-for-Charlie-Brown-to- sing-’round-his-dwarf-tree, and it confused the hell out of me. What was going on?? I’ll tell you: the dry heat was so, so intense, it felt as if I were standing in the shelter of my childhood fireplace, letting the wood burning stove scorch me till my skin turned red even under my flannel footie pajamas. So much so that it gave me sort of a sensory flashback. Yes, New Orleans in July, if you’re lucky, loses it’s deep tropical rainforest blanket-wetness on some days, and then it just feels like a blast furnace.

I can’t recall if I’ve ever mentioned here that, soon after I moved down here and was complaining for the tenth time one day about how I was on the verge of fainting from the heat, people told me that after a time my blood would thin, and then I wouldn’t feel the heat so much. I’m not sure if that’s actually happened — can any doctors out there justify this theory — but it is true that this summer is having far less severe effects on my body than last summer. I often wear jeans and longer sleeved shirts, and after about five minutes outside, I feel just fine. Still hot, yes, but not miserable; I don’t seem to melt and fall into a Scarlet O’Hara-quality swoon, which I was famous for this time last year. This new survival skill of mine doesn’t make me any less annoying to be around, unfortunately; instead of whining that I feel close to death, now I smile smugly at the poor tourists who walk around practically naked, saturated in sweat and damp air, their bodies mottled red (from sunburn) and grey (from being near sunstroke and heat exhaustion). Yep, now I just feel superior. I even turn my air conditioning off, frequently, and just make do with ceiling fans!

I mention all this because I was fascinated last summer to see the locals walking around during the day without passing out. I wondered how they survived it, why they didn’t save up their whole working lives so they could retire somewhere north of here, even just Kentucky or Tennessee would have made more sense to me… but now I see that you do get used to it. You use sunblock, wear long sleeves, carry a cotton hanky or, even better, a terry washcloth with you for sopping up sweat at all times. You don’t have to spend thousands keeping the AC down to 40 degrees, because the glorious houses here are often built to keep heat out — thank heaven for my north facing windows that never give me direct sunlight, and for an apartment built on stilts!

One last thing: my kitten has made a contribution to this post, by standing on the keyboard while I type. She writes:

[''''';uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuy;'''''[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[ERR

Stay cool!

If you hear gunshots in East Jefferson…

…it could very well be the SWAT team shooting at nutria by the 17th St. Canal! Gross — though, since I’ve never actually seen a nutria or heard of them wandering around my neighborhood, I don’t know that I approve of so much effort going into their destruction when there are cockroaches, jumping spiders, and flesh-toned lizards creeping around everywhere, getting into our apartments…

I think there’s a cricket in here.

Woke up this morning to find a gigantic roach lying on its back on the rug in front of my kitchen sink. I thought, hooray, at least it’s dead already. So I went to scoop it up and, horror horror horror, it took off running. My new kitten sat there for a moment and watched me squirm, then leaped in to save me. She nipped the roach up in her teeth and went running with it towards the bedroom, though…not the ideal response, in my book. I had to chase after her, and convince her to let me catch the thing in a plastic container for disposal. Shudder… I don’t think I’ll ever get used to cockroach paranoia. You learn fairly quickly that the big ones are nothing really to worry about because it’s the little ones that mean infestation, but I’m still hugely upset that this one was only inches from my kitchen garbage can. Did it wind up there by mistake, or have the roaches that live in the roots of Justine’s tree in my front yard suddenly realized that there’s a tasty supply of dried up canned cat food chucked into the bin at the end of every day… all that unappetizing waste must look so, so mesmerizing to a cockroach!

In other news, my cat and I both keep perking up our ears. Something’s chirping, somewhere close. I think we have a cricket somewhere in here. Or maybe not. Surely she’d be running around trying to find it, if there were one residing inside our apartment?

I keep expecting her to grow into a one-woman pest control company! Right now she’s curled up on the counter, on a copy of The New Orleans Levee (a local satirical paper — “we don’t hold anything back!”), with her head up, eyes shut, and a tiny kitten smile on her face. Awwww. She’s still the greatest thing that has happened to me since coming to NOLA.

It was one whole year ago that I made my first trip down here, an apartment hunting excursion one month ahead of starting my new job. Walking around my neighborhood tonight, my body going into shock as I passed from the air conditioned cold (85 degrees!) of my apartment out into the brutal tropical jungle air, I remembered how thrilling and otherworldly if felt to walk around the Garden District on that visit. I had fully intended to take a little Parisian cottage, complete with shared bricked courtyard, somewhere in the French Quarter, but then I saw all the gas lights on the porches and the stunning variety of palm trees that sit in people’s yards as if it’s the most ordinary thing in the world! I remembered that wonderful feeling of possibility, and the idea I had that this New Orleans move was going to be a gigantic restart, just the kick my life needed after New York City had lost a bit of its inspiration and I had started to feel stagnant and trapped. I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t done too many of the things I meant to do when I moved down here. New Orleans is such a brilliant place to be if you are a writer and a musician — so much heritage, so much going on around you all the time, so many people working oh so hard at their various arts. I could hate myself for having had such a lazy first eleven-and-a-half months, or I could just chalk it up to a prolonged adjustment period and say that from now on I’m going to do better. Actually, if I’m honest, I have been writing a lot in the last month, finally, and I’ve got some ideas down for a few new songs. It’s never too late to start, I guess, and besides, maybe I’m acting quite within the character of this city to be a little slow in letting my projects get off the ground…

My cat seems to be hinting that she wants some attention. Time to play fetch! Below is my favorite photo of her so far — I took this picture a few days ago, a testament both to her outrageous cuteness and a moment when I was actually sitting down to read and write… If only life could be like this all the time:

Too, too cute for words

Regional News: “Valedictorian’s speech sets off call for English-only at graduations”

Here is a story from this weekend’s Houma Courier about the Terrebonne Parish school board’s debate over whether or not an English-only rule — like prayers — should be made mandatory at all high school graduation ceremonies after Ellender High’s valedictorian, Cindy Vo, directed a sentence in Vietnamese to her parents before translating the sentence for the audience. Board member Rickie Pitre summarized the board’s overall objection: “I don’t like them [children of immigrants] addressing in a foreign language. They [the ceremonies or speeches] should be in English.” Apart from the fact that Pitre’s own faulty pronoun-antecedent agreement is troubling in the middle of a debate he and his co-conservatives are leading regarding the sole supremacy of the English language, there’s a sad contradiction at work here that the successes of the children of immigrants in his community and within the Terrebonne Parish schools should be punished and covered up rather than celebrated on graduation day. Even thinking with self-centeredly as a politician and an administrator, how could a board member not want to show off his school’s involvement in what will hopefully become this first-generation student’s future successes? Any valedictorian’s own efforts are praiseworthy and deserve the attention they get on graduation night, but Ms. Vo must also have had some supportive teachers somewhere along the way, so it just seems that on a purely political level there is an opportunity being missed here for some a) recognition of the fact that the work of fantastic local teachers is reflected in Ms. Vo’s own success, and b) some self-congratulatory back-patting on the part of the school administration, if it’s looking for a poster-child to speak for its ability to serve all kinds of students successfully. Unless, of course, you’re a white supremacist, and don’t want to be reminded that a sub-human non-Caucasian whipped your kid’s ass with her outstanding GPA and acceptance to LSU, or that you yourself will only ever be monolingual? (Vo’s cousin, Hue, was co-valedictorian, by the way.)

It’s nothing to do with New Orleans, but…

…what blogger can resist the fist bump heard round the world? Of everything Barack Obama has done so far, this is the act that will make him look human in the non-elitist sense that seems to matter in this campaign? Not his speech on race. No, it’s da dap.

I still love Justine, but…

…last night, when I came home from an evening stroll through the neighborhood–during which I tried to take night-time photographs of the various flowers that were still wide open after dark–there was a boisterous, screeching kitten bounding around my front yard. She nipped crazily in and out of the garbage cans, up and down the porch steps, and, oh dear, out into the street to duck under the odd car. She was tiny, barely two handfuls of fluffy calico. I sat down to watch her and she immediately crawled into my lap. And up onto my shoulders to lick my face and neck, crying loudly the whole time. I tried NOT to pet her–WHY allow any attachment?–but sat outside for about half an hour to see if any neighbors strolled by with flashlights, nervously calling out a convincingly feline name. Nothing of the kind occurred, so rather than see her run over by an SUV, I decided to take her in for the night. And to put up posters the next morning, like a good citizen.

We spent the rest of the evening joined at the hip, ankle, shoulder, arm, hand, laptop…she wouldn’t leave my side even for a second. I thought for sure that, even though she had no collar or tags, she must belong to someone. She was too socialized to be a feral cat. It did seem that she’d gone quite some time without food: she sucked down one can of Fancy Feast and screamed for more. Eventually, we went to bed. Yes, we, and she likes, apparently, to sleep buried deep under the covers, where she slept all night between my knees, waking every time I moved to start sinking her tiny needle claws into me as she kneaded my flesh. ALL NIGHT. Occasionally working her way out from under the sheets to knead my face, my scalp (WEIRD), and the area of my throat warmed by my jugular veins. I was highly uncomfortable with that, but also terrified to move, in case she got her hooks into me (remember the fishing scene in Funny Farm, with Chevy Chase?)

We got up this morning at 4am because someone was ripping around my room tearing up everything she could get her hands on. I figured I may as well feed her again because she was squealing so loudly. Once again, she ate an entire can: that seemed a bit much for a cat that weighed only about 3 pounds. I went ahead and printed up my posters while I checked on line for the numbers for cat vets, Louisiana ASPCA, and pet adoption leagues. By the time offices opened at 8 or 9am, things were looking grim. Very grim. I couldn’t find any places nearby that could take her with a full guarantee that they would not euthanize, and she was such a sweet, cuddly, affectionate little thing–with gigantic eyes that followed me everywhere–I couldn’t bear the thought of doing anything like that. Many hours of tears and internal debate–greatly spurred, I must confess, by the discovery in the dawn light that she was crawling with fleas (remember my bed)–later, I decided to not wait to hear from any likely owners and took the plunge to take her into a vet myself, just to see how the poor thing was coping.
Well, 260-plus-dollars later, she is a healthy kitten, now flea-free, with no worms, leukemia, HIV, etc. With all her vaccines, a fresh bath, and clipped claws. She’s hiding under my bed now, sound asleep. That means she’ll be up all damned night, right? Well, we’ll need to work on a schedule. You can do it with humans, why not with kittens? The vet said she was only about 8-10 weeks old, and that I should not expect to hear from anyone wanting to reclaim her. She had no collar or tags, had been out on her own for a good few days to be so flea-ridden (or else kind of neglected when she had a home), and certainly without food for some time, which explained all her screeching and crying when I first let her indoors. She just wanted to be fed!

My posters are still up, so you never know, I may still hear from someone claiming to be her owner. I guess that if that happens, I’ll just eat the cost of the vet bill, because at least now I know she’s healthy and vaccinated and has the potential to be flea-free. Poor little mite. I still love Justine the squirrel and will happily sit on the porch and watch her, but perhaps will no longer feel the psychotic attachment to her as a substitute pet, now that little kitten has moved in. I won’t name her, not until the ads have been up for a few days and I feel certain that no one is going to respond.

FEMA Trailers Blamed for Child Respiratory Diseases

Today, a story about very young children born into formaldehyde-containing FEMA trailers and the numbers of them afflicted with higher rates of asthma and other respiratory illnesses. The article discusses the fact that these parents, already in difficult material straits to say the least, are struggling to pay for their children’s necessary healthcare coverage–costs that one commentator says will eventually cost the government, through class action lawsuits, more than was paid out after the World Trade Center attacks.