Picture this…

You are Justin Sipp. You have a criminal record but currently you are working at Burger King. Your brother is giving you a ride there for your early morning shift. He may be drowsy. He may be hurried. Either way, he commits a moving violation and is pulled over by a police officer.

You don’t know it, but that officer is Jason Giroir. You also don’t know that Giroir sees himself as a “punisher.” He doesn’t always do every thing “by the book.” He sees you as a thug and thinks a thug should “die like a thug.”

But you know there are rouge officers in this police department. You have heard the stories about the Danziger Bridge, about Henry Glover, about Len Davis, about Antoinette Frank. You know the police are under investigation by the Federal Government. But more than that, you have heard about and witnessed things in your neighborhood, things that happened to your friends and family, things that never reached the media. You have never trusted the police.

There is something, a hunch maybe, that leads you to believe this is one of those rouge officers. Something he said, something he did.

Two more officers arrive.

They take your brother from the car and put him in handcuffs.

You are alone now. Just a guy who works at Burger King in a violent city, with a violent police force, with no one around.

Are you terrified?

Are you enraged?

You have a stolen gun.

Family: Teen murdered was at wrong place at wrong time

Pastor Raphael knows many of the neighborhood kids. He said one boy told him he had seen Summers laying there wounded hours before anyone called police.
“He had this fear of calling the police. He wanted something to be done and he said he knew that kid and he just felt he couldn’t call the police that he wouldn’t be treated right or he would be considered a suspect if he called to report it, which a tragedy,” Raphael said.

This reminds of something that happened to me a few years back. It was probably some time late in 2006. I was finishing up some work on the house in the front yard and was hosing off brushes. A kid who looked to be in middle school came up to me and asked me if I could walk him home. He seemed timid and frightened but I can’t tell you how many red flags went off in my head. I thought for sure I was being set up for something. I was somewhat new to the neighborhood and a neighbor I had at the time was constantly telling me how mad it was and how we were “urban pioneers” by even living there. I still thought critically about things but still, hearing things over and over again affects your sub-conscious to a degree. So my guard was up more than maybe it should have been.*

I asked the kid a few questions. First, “why do I need to walk you home?”

He said he was out after curfew and was afraid of the police. That seemed like a legit fear. I asked where he lived and he gave a decent enough answer, on Hendee a few blocks up and a few blocks over, probably 8 blocks total. I asked him where he was coming from and he said his grandmother’s house across the river. That seemed legit too. I asked how it was that he was out after curfew and he said the ferry was late. At that time the ferry schedule was pretty bad so that seemed to check out.

My neighborhood isn’t too bad but it gets worse the closer one gets to Hendee. A few murders had happened there and it was a hot spot on the crime map. I didn’t want to walk this kid through there for my sake more than his. But he didn’t want to walk in the Point any more than he had to either.

So I told him I’d drive him home. No go. He didn’t want to. I guess that was reasonable on his part because I could take him anywhere once he got in the car right?

What convinced me to go with him more than anything was he looked scared. Maybe scared of getting in trouble but mostly it seemed he was scared of the cops themselves.

So we walked. All the way through the rest of the Point. We talked but I don’t remember about what. Some people hollered at us and we got some strange looks from everyone outside the Newton Market. At the corner of Whitney and Newton, I asked him how much further and he said he only lived a few blocks more and I asked him if it was okay to finish off the rest of the walk on his own. “Why?” he asked. “For the same reason you didn’t want to walk up to this spot, I don’t want to go any further. I’m scared.” This reply seemed to satisfy him.

More in his own neighborhood and more comfortable it seems, he agreed to do the rest on his own and seemed in better spirits as he crossed the street on toward his block. His demeanor having altered greatly. He didn’t seem scared or vulnerable any more.

I’ll never know if I was being set up for something or not. I’ll never know what would have happened if I had walked him all the way home or what may have happened on the way back alone. I believe nothing.

Point is, this kid was scared of the cops and took a chance on a complete stranger rather than those sworn to serve and protect him. I only wish the kid in the story above had told a stranger about what he saw. I wish more that he felt comfortable going to the police.

* That neighbor has since moved away. We had a falling out not long after and I stopped talking to him but those that do said he’s thinking about moving back to New Orleans. I am so happy the rest of us “pioneers” got the place back together for him just in time.

Prison guards, inmate detail brutality inside jail

“Everyone was smoking crack,” Picou said.

Picou said inmates constantly threatened to kill him, usually for being white

These two lines are almost identical to a colloquial report I heard a few weeks ago from a fella that spent 60 days in OPP. Almost exactly. Completely different guy. Same shit though.

Between this and the consistent dismissal of murder victims as having lengthy criminal records (as if that makes it less bad) and Gusman’s pleas for a better facility to lock people up …well …it makes me wonder why anyone thinks criminal justice isn’t the cause of, rather than the solution to crime in New Orleans. It makes me wonder if the deteriorating conditions aren’t being permitted to drive home the supposed need for a new prison?

I read more words in a dead tree edition than I have in a many years Sunday afternoon. Like almost everyone around town I was gripped and saddened by the Steve Gleason story. More so because earlier that week I was cleaning up the iTunes folder and listened to several podcasts on not only ALS and its seemingly undeniable link to brain trauma from hits but also the links to depression and suicides of former atheletes who have sustained brain injuries from concussions and injuries that were less than concussions but on the same level as having your “bell rung.”

It’s hard for me to differentiate between the increasing ALS diagnosis in former athletes and the many, many instances of mental health diseases as a result of head trauma. Though the specifics down the line may be different, the issues are a result of Tau proteins in an athlete’s brain that form after an injury. Sometimes the proteins linger in the brain for decades and cause what’s called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (punch drunk), sometimes they also seep into the spinal column and cause a disorder almost identical to ALS.

And lately, it’s been contributing to a growing ethical issue that I have been quietly dealing with. It’s not been enough to cause me to stop watching football like the gentleman in the first story below. It has been enough however to give me pause and it has added another, more serious element to the thrill of seeing the “big hit.” I have been thinking critically about it as I try to consider what the fans’ role is in the whole thing. Is the thrill of the game worth the sorrow of seeing the great athletes disabled?

Articles and other media below:

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The first is from American Public Media and it presents in the first story a fan’s perspective on the guilt in watching football knowing the damage that is being inflicted on players.

The second story tells of former University of Florida and Tampa Bay linebacker Scott Brantley and the disabling strokes he has endured.

Giving Up The Game
Friday, February 04 2011

I looked up Brantley on YouTube and found this smasher on Detroit QB Eric Hipple which is the most powerful hit I have ever seen.

——————————–

The Real Sports segment on concussions, depression, suicide and mental health later in life. It includes former Saint safety Gene Atkins….

Part 2 is here

———————————–

Real Sports segment linking ALS (or similar diseases) to concussions…

BO Real Sports Part 1: Steve Smith, former Penn State and Raider Football Player, has ALS Part 2 Part 3

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NPR story on studies that shows ALS in athletes may be a very similar disease related to repeated brain trauma…

Study Calls Lou Gehrig’s Disease Into Question

Note that this forecast puts a major metropolitan area in the northeast quadrant with an uptick in intensity just off the coast. Remember that.

Back in 2007, I did an e-mail Q&A style interview with Chuck Watson, Director of Research and Development for Kinetic Analysis Corporation. In the five-year history of this blog’s goofy musings and absurd ramblings on the New Orleans experience, this interview probably contained the most important thing this blog has ever done- a qualified hurricane forecaster stating emergency mangers in areas prone to be in Hurricane paths imply or even demand exaggerated predictions from forecasters and, the forecasters indeed comply…

The Chicory: You said in your comment that emergency managers “always want people scared” and the media doesn’t always publish below average predictions. Does this mean authorities pressure you to deliver sensational numbers? Does it effect the manner in which researchers study and predict storms?

Chuck Watson: Huge question. I don’t think pressure from emergency managers and other sources directly impacts the research itself (although it does impact who gets funding to an extent), but it has a big, big, impact on forecasts and the way they are reported, both seasonally and operationally.

Emergency managers have a tough job. They are always pushing hurricane awareness, especially at the beginning of the season. Calling for a quiet season means less press coverage, and less scary coverage, at exactly the same time they are trying to get people to start thinking about evacuation plans and preparedness. So they get touchy when we say a below normal season for their jurisdiction because they perceive it as making their job harder. They prefer that we, in the words of one irate caller from a couple years ago, “either tell people they might get hit by a storm this year or shut the f*** up, ’cause people won’t prepare otherwise”. I (obviously) disagree with that attitude – if you treat people like idiots, generally they don’t disappoint you. I think if you explain the risks and the benefits of mitigation and preparedness, without the scare tactics, most people will react accordingly.

I always tell people that it only takes one storm to ruin your day, and even if our odds for a hurricane in your county are half of normal, say 1 in 100, that’s still pretty big odds you will lose your roof. Sometimes that message gets lost in the technical discussions about the forecasts, but it’s not because I’m not saying it.

Operationally, the hype from the media and pressure from emergency managers is intense. NHC sometimes uses what they call the “forecast of least regret” (their words). For example, if the storm is forecast to brush the coast, they tend to show it making landfall, making a direct hit on a major city rather than an adjacent lower populated area, or call for the winds to be higher than either the models or unbiased forecasting would indicate. NHC has reportedly changed tracks at the behest of emergency managers to make them “scarier” and encourage people to evacuate, especially for high risk areas like the Florida Keys. I think this is a bad idea. The forecast should be the best possible rendition of where the storm is going and how strong it will be when it gets there. Fudging the tracks and, more typically, the intensities, tends to decrease the credibility of the forecasts and over time is counterproductive.

Reading that I almost immediately recall this “Hell on Earth” forecast before Katrina from the National Weather Service. While the NWS was patting itself on the back for scaring the shit out of people and inciting them to leave, consider that the many details in the release didn’t happen. All gabled roofs didn’t fail. All apartments didn’t collapse. It mentions throughout the damage from wind but the majority of Katrina damage in Louisiana and Mississippi was from levee failures and storm surge flooding. Nothing about flooding was mentioned in the release. So while the bulletin was heralded by the NWS as saving lives, it was mostly bogus and off the mark. Perhaps if it urged people to seek higher ground it would have saved even more lives?

The chickens came home to roost three years later when Hurricane Ike approached the Texas Gulf Coast…

Why Hurricane Ike’s “Certain Death” Warning Failed

So if my dreamed-of “absolute database of everything” actually existed, I would love to find out just how useful scaring the shit out of people to motivate them is. It appears to be one-shot pony as many residents quickly figure out the tactics. Nudge that intensity up a little bit, nudge that path over a little bit.

Next thing you know you have a Cat 3 Irene hitting the 300 year-old port city of Charleston and effecting 700,000 people in the metro area. And it’s already working…

Forecasters say SC could see effects of Irene

There are larger issues here as well, stuff like the role government should play in our lives, “nanny state” shit. I think this type of thing creates a dependence on government for thought and direction when an average person is perfectly capable of thinking for them self despite what a lot of others think. Chuck agreed above when he said, “if you treat people like idiots, generally they don’t disappoint you.” People aren’t as stupid as they are thought to be. There are labels telling folks not to eat the rat poison or think an inflatable Sponge Bob is a good lif life preserver* (helmet, seat belt and open container laws fit in here too).

But hey, at least people will actually get sick or die from eating the rat poison. These hurricane forecasters have escalated / devolved into “we know what’s good for you more than you do” with a heaping helping of “fear is better than truth.”

* Consider the possibility of a drowning person with no life preserver whose friends don’t toss him the huge inflatable Sponge Bob because it specifically says not to on it. Oh fortuna, if I’m ever drowning throw my ass anything that floats and I’ll take my chances.

But first, this is all so Social Media, Social Justice.

The good…

Using Twitter handle @Riotcleanup, citizens are coming together following protests of the police shooting a Tottenham man. The Twitter account is raking in thousands of new followers per hour in the process. (At last count they had 59,000.)
Meanwhile, Riotcleanup.co.uk lists times and locations for clean up efforts, along with suggestions for equipment that people could bring along.
Facebook pages such as Post riot cleanup: Let’s help London and Riot Cleanup are keeping up with the aftermath as well, and serving as launch pads for other local communities to begin their own work.

From After London Riots, Social Media Plays Janitor, Cop

Aaaand the bad…

THE destruction in dozens of parts of London began to look like the first “BlackBerry riots” yesterday, with gangs using the smartphones to co-ordinate some of their targets for looting and burning.

From BlackBerry riot driven by the mob mentality

And some ugly…

On Monday, RIM tweeted: “We feel for those impacted by the riots in London. We have engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can.”

As a result, a hacktivist group going by the name TeaMp0isoN (cute) hacked into RIM’s official blog on Tuesday to post the following menacing reply:

Dear Rim;
You Will _NOT_ assist the UK Police because if u do innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a blackberry will get charged for no reason at all, the Police are looking to arrest as many people as possible to save themselves from embarrassment…. if you do assist the police by giving them chat logs, gps locations, customer information & access to peoples BlackBerryMessengers you will regret it, we have access to your database which includes your employees information; e.g – Addresses, Names, Phone Numbers etc. – now if u assist the police, we _WILL_ make this information public and pass it onto rioters…. do you really want a bunch of angry youths on your employees doorsteps? Think about it…. and don’t think that the police will protect your employees, the police can’t protect themselves let alone protect others….. if you make the wrong choice your database will be made public, save yourself the embarrassment and make the right choice. don’t be a puppet..

From London rioters organized looting with BlackBerries
As RIM works with police to identify rioters, the company’s receives a threatening message

There may come a time, hopefully many, many years from now when Romy and I, if we save up enough dough, will inherit this lovely piece of property that has already been hundred-year stormed this century. That means no more for another hundred years right?

This is if we are willing to leave the delicate pleasures of living on Algiers Point, the toots of the ferry, the bending notes of the calliope as they soar across the river, the midnight freight trains, the “Coming Around the Mountain” MIDI of the ice cream / weed man or the school bands marching down Pacific. If we are willing to trade those for calm still days where one can hear the surf from the Gulf, intercoastal barge traffic and choruses of frogs. Doris would love it but she’ll be long gone if this ever comes to pass.

I’ve only entertained this foray into one possible future because I envision by this time I will be so schooled in every manner of political corruption here in New Orleans and Louisiana and the manner in which to detect it, that as I sit down at my computing device (whatever it may be) an old man blogger, I will have before me the ripe, mostly untouched fields of political corruption in the city of Pensacola, the county of Escambia and the glorious state of Florida before me. This is a place where the citizens view their seemingly functional governments as the good guys and the endless corrupt administrations in Louisiana and Illinois as the bad guys like what Scarface said. Many of these people need to be shown the ugly underbelly of their own glad-handing elected officials. Perhaps they have touched on it a time or two but they looked away in horror.

Yes sir, the corruption is less sophisticated there. Schooled in the basics by local bloggers and activists here in New Orleans, even a lucky-ass folk artist like myself will be able to “follow the money” to quote Sandy Hester or Detective Freamon (not sure who to credit with that one). I may be able to be a big fish in a small pond. Hammering away at my futuristic version of a keyboard and keeping up with the young ones using my New Orleans-earned education in thieving crook politicians.

Anyway, visions of the future aside the only reason I got all into the fourth dimension was because my friends back home were getting all uppity when poor folks complained about this…

New Florida Law Requires Drug Testing for Welfare Recipients

But kind of turned the other cheek about this…

Rick Scott’s new gift to Solantic: drug testing state employees

These are middle class people too. The middle-class American pays for everybody. They pay for the rich mansions and the public housing. We are the pipeline for the entire country. I don’t grasp why people would rather funnel their working class tax money up into the hands of crooked politicians and other corporations that have them by the balls in lieu of down into their own neighborhoods. Do they not understand that they are much more closer financially to the person that makes $12,000 a year than they are the one that makes $250,000 and up? Ego doesn’t allow that. Must be racism I guess. Maybe classism.

“Life art” as in that shit that goes on all around us is sometimes art just by observation and not my ongoing perception, experience and actions within it making me a “Life Artist”…

It just so happens as I spent a good portion of yesterday trying to grasp the pretentiousness of someone saying their way of living was art and calling them self a “life artist” one of my very favorite instances of “life art” was meeting the same fate as Kira Kaechele’s pieces.

A little over a year ago past Varg had the good sense* to post an image on The Chicory about one of my favorite pieces of “life art,” a house on Whitney that had been marked after the storm with the words, “Danger, Unstable.” Over the years as the house continued to stand despite the proclamation written on its front, pieces of plywood fell off and portions of the spray paint washed away and slowly, “Danger, Unstable” became “Dang Stable.”

We all laugh when pieces of signs fall off and become something else. Like when a sign for “Hip Hop Dance Classes $25″ becomes “Hip Hop Dance Asses $25″ or something like that. But I don’t think I have ever seen this happen so that the meaning is juxtaposed. So that it becomes the exact opposite of what it was meant to be. And the slow reveal as the house was expected to collapse but stayed up and the words slowly transformed day-by-day, pass-by-pass on the way to work or play, that little house went from being a dangerous place facing imminent collapse under its own weight to a “little engine that could,” standing proud, dang stable.

As I was writing yesterday about the destruction of Kira Kaechele’s Art Life pieces being torn down by the city, my own version of Life Art was being torn down in symmetry.

Doing this all Squandered Heritage style…

Before…

After…

* I say that because he’s usually fucking me over much the way I’m fucking over future Varg right now by wasting my day writing blog posts.

It was a crunchy breakfast experience this morning when I woke up to read Ariella Cohen’s interview with “St. Roch art impresario” Kirsha Kaechele. It certainly sounds as if Kaechele got into this with the best intentions but didn’t seem committed to the projects long term and, like a girl that dumps her firends the first time a cute boy comes around, ran off to Tasmania with a fella who made his money betting horses. I’m guessing he hated New Orleans.

Full disclosure: I too make art from old houses. But my houses have already been torn down by the time I come to them and I have no lofty dreams that they will ever do anything other than hang on someone’s wall, decorating their home and gaining in value as I age and eventually die. I mean, I owe that to my patrons right?

Full disclosure: I am probably two degrees of separation many times over with Kaechele as I have talked to and am friends with several fellow artists who worked on her projects or were doing shows in the St. Roch area around that time. I never heard anything bad about her personally from these people so, benefit of the doubt, she’s probably a very nice person. A few of those artists are tried-and-true residents of New Orleans and have done well adorning the city with their art, giving to it and getting some in return. A few others come and go and, while they are certainly ambassadors for the city around the world, aren’t all in, and, these days, I admire more and more those who are “all in,” the “feet first” folks.

And speaking of “all in,” let’s get in to this interview…

The intention has always been for the houses to transition into green space. They’ve spent the last decades well beyond restoration, so I always knew it was their inevitable end.

Whoa! Hey! We didn’t get past the first line! I don’t know much about restoration but if a house isn’t structurally sound, people shouldn’t have been doing art projects in there. And if they were structurally sound then they certainly could have been restored. It also seems weird that so much money would have been sunk into an utterly temporary art piece rather than preserving New Orleans’ precious housing stock (composed of some of the richest and most resplendent cypress and heartpine anyone has ever fucking seen.) I have seen homes with termite-eaten floor joists and ceiling rafters brought back. What were the conditions of the structures of these houses? What were the wall studs like? Could the foundations have been shored? Why was it viable to stage art shows in them but not to restore them? Was it an inspector who deemed them to be “beyond restoration”? Is this merely a way to revise history to fit peace of mind regarding their eventual demolition by neglect?

Also, I need some definition of “green space” and its difference from “empty lot.” I think of this as green space and these as an empty lots. Green space is parks and playgrounds and such maintained by the city or an organization or trust. Empty lots are privatley owned parcels of land that can be bought and sold. In New Orleans, many of these lots had houses on them that were destroyed in a fire or hurricane or were allowed to fall into neglect by their owners and torn down by the city. What happens after that is also dependent on the owner. They need to make sure the area is landscaped several times a year. If the owner is not there to oversee the property (because they are in another hemisphere perhaps) then what often occurs is people park derelict cars there, do illegal dumping, simple neighborhood trash blows in there, hazardous chemicals like oils and paints are put there. A bad empty lot can really screw up a block, make people’s living conditions worse.

In fact, it was my intention that the demolition itself would be an art piece, a series of performances.

I am pleased this never came to pass as I couldn’t conceive of anything more wretched than the concept it was based on.

Still, we have saved all the salvageable material and there is a piece Tom Beale has planned for it. His piece is about transformation and purification, so the poetry of the rotten house and all the bureaucracy surrounding it, reassembling into a beautiful object, remains intact.

His art looks pretty amazing so I wish him the best of luck. It’s a little too abstract for this folk artist but it’s organic and wood so, right on. But the word “planned” makes me worry that it may be a while before we see that.

The Lens: What is your plan for the site?
KK: Public green space.

Oh, public green space? So she will donate it to the city? Or an organization? With the guarantee that they will use it in this way? And by public do we mean kids from the neighborhood can go on it with permission? Because I think she’ll need some sort of insurance for that and probably a bunch of other permits and what not. again, I am sensing that she is thinking empty lots as being the same thing as green space and I’m just not so sure about that.

They are the epitome of decay, which on certain days, before I owned them and had to deal with their reality, I found beautiful.

Ah yes. The fascination with the destruction of New Orleans! Among the most common themes of artists who visit/move here! The beauty of its entropy! Some of us find its restored creole cottages and shotguns beautiful. Not all of us are third world and loving it. Some realize i’ts nothing like the third world, don’t love the conditions here, and actively spend a little part of each day trying to make it better rather than glamorizing its destruction. Dear creators out there, the artistic depiction of demolished thing like New Orleans houses and old amusement parks and flooded stuff, by all means, do it if you have to. But there is nothing original in it.

I was inspired by the contrast that could happen between their state and the art that lived in them.

Of course she could have just fixed them up and then put the inspired art in them. Or at least got them to a point where they wouldn’t fall apart and not invest in the finishing. See you can get a house to a certain stage in the renovation and not spend all that much money. Alot of money in a renovation comes from stuff like fixtures and plumbing and electrical and such. Getting a house structurally sound doesn’t cost nearly as much because it’s straight building, no experts and such.

Despite the costliness and difficulty of transitioning the properties, I am excited about their new life as public green space.

Well, business-wise, I could have advised her that’s it’s always poor practice to sink a lot of money into destroying your assets. See, what I’m doing is, I’m putting money into my own house to make it more valuable, saving up cash for a new bathroom and kitchen and stuff, adding bushes and trees and decks and so forth. That way, I can live in and enjoy the house, contribute financially, artistically and civically to the neighborhood and still have a viable asset to sell when I’m ready to move to a bigger place or the old folks home.

I might miss the controversy, as I’m sure everyone will now love it.

Ahhhhh. I recognize the spirit of this. Some would rather be notorious than anonymous. Some people realize that they can be the center of attention if they stir up a bunch of shit. People loathe them but at least they are talking about them. This reminds of this dude Ralph out at the Square, he’s always up in people’s shit, spreading rumors and what not. It gives him a reason to be out there and be talked about. Then he passes out in the park.

I see myself as a life artist. I work with the intersection of art, architecture and ecology. But I am most interested in the act of living. Life is the medium I most often work in. I understand this kind of statement is exactly what irritates my detractors, but I am not going to lie just to pacify them. There is no point because it is absolutely true.

Never really thought to give it a name but I might feel her on this. An artist sees art everywhere they look. What that means is everything influences their art. Unfortunately “life artist” makes it sound like their life is something grandiose to be held up AS art and that’s pretentious. If one is living their life as an art piece it isn’t life but a figment of one, it can’t be dualism. Also, the reality of this is one can never paint over the bad parts, the mistakes. So they should be careful and calculated and make as few of them as possible in the commission of their “piece.” And no, the mistakes aren’t part of it, not talking about rough edges and paint splotches, talking about neon paint in the middle of Earth tones, wobbling benches and ugly sounds of jackhammers in the middle of nocturnes. If one is envisioning there life as a piece of art, they should be a master craftsmen at it before doing so.

I liked living in St. Roch because it is more vibrant and alive than most suburbs, especially wealthy ones (with the exception of Audubon Place which is a wild place) and therefore more interesting.

St. Roch is right in the middle of New Orleans proper. It isn’t a suburb. A suburb is Metaire, Covington, Marrero, Gretna, Harahan. Wait, what happened at Audubon Place? … Anyway, ask Lord David if the crime spree that went down in his neighborhood last year could be described by residents as “interesting.”

Despite the dysfunction, I love St. Roch because it is a vital place with an infinitely strong community. So, I don’t share the agenda of many positive social entrepreneurs because, minus the drugs and litter and theft and violence, I like things the way they are.

It’s like here are these good people, these strong community minded people, and all up in between them you got these drug pushers and litterers and killers and rapists. If we could just get rid of these people, these other people could have happy lives without their cousins and brothers in-laws.

I lived in New Orleans well before the flood and had to rebuild just like everyone else. I am someone who lived in a place I loved and did what I do — make art and hold events for the sake of it. (Nothing was ever for profit.) I also ended up holding neighborhood classes in my home three times a week, taking kids on field trips and starting an organic farm in which kids sold vegetables to New Orleans restaurants. I did what I love doing.

That’s awesome. More and more people should do this. Could have just kept doing this But then, other stuff started to happen right?

After I left home I lived primarily in the third world, so in many ways, St. Roch was the most natural choice.

This bears repeating: St. Roch is not the Third World. See Mac McClelland.

It was where I felt at home. I know it is unlikely, given my simultaneous taste for the finer things (David calls me Gucci Gutter), but it is entirely true.

But Kirsha, having seen so much poverty, doesn’t it ever sicken you to see the ugly disparity in living conditions around the world? Do you understand that your own, private experience in St. Roch is nothing near the conditions of the people living there because you can up and leave when you so choose? That while you have conjured up this notion of feeling “at home” there, you are so very fundamentally different than your neighbors because you have so many more choices? Do you grasp that the fundamental condition of poverty is that there are no options? That when your friends are killed or the shots go off at night the ability to make a decision to get out isn’t as easy as buying a plane ticket and leaving? That’s the genuine, ugly essence of being poor. Do you ever think that?

There is of course the other obvious change, which is that when I moved here, there was not a single white person living in the immediate blocks, and now there is a considerable group which, judging by momentum, will likely not be the minority for long.

Were they drawn there by art projects perhaps?

I fear it is an impossible dream but I wish St. Roch could maintain its black residents, that the community could stay intact. The only thing I would like to see change is better resources: education, jobs and infrastructure. That would likely eliminate the only real problems as far as I am concerned: drugs and violence.

Yes, yes, I certainly agree. The neighborhood needs education, jobs and, what was that last one? Infrastructure?

I told Doug, post-Sonoma farm and post-Tasmania, that I was back to set things moving again and even informed him of my new funding model, sex. (Which I told him was proving even more lucrative than drugs.) But he was only interested in creating his version of a controversy. A very boring, puritanical one.

I’d love to hear more about this. Wait, there is a Sonoma farm too? Is she the only white person on the farm? Because I know they have lots of Mexicans working up there. Some of the Vargas clan I’m sure. My grandparents were pickers.

Of the five, I have demolished three rotten ones, all in the area across the street that is now becoming green space. As for the Bakery, I painstakingly restored it twice (once before and once after the flood). So, although demolishing it would be good zen practice and would likely uncomplicate my life, this is the space I hope artists will use to create work and continue neighborhood classes. The last property is partially demolished as a garden for the Bakery, with the structure given over to a neighborhood friend and architect who is planning to use it for a project.

Okay, it must be stated again, what she calls “green space” is an empty lot where a house once was. What she calls “good zen practice” is realizing she abandoned a project and wants to clear her conscious of it via loud bulldozer in a neighborhood half a world away. I hope no one near there is planning to get a few moments rest between shifts during that process. “Planning to use it for a project” could be something great. But it could be something screwed up or, more likely it seems, could be nothing at all.

(Luckily, all my haters are white or really act like it and therefore are primarily not in St. Roch, where I’d be healed by the love of the originals).

I was about to end this on a notion of “best intentions” and everything but then what she said really sunk in.

Okay, okay, all her haters are white or really act like it…

So I am guessing she means these haters are black people who are “acting white.” That’s how it reads right? Why would white people act white?

Now, every time I have heard this phrase it has been between two black people, one of whom is doing something conceived as being uppity. It could be straightening her hair or it could be planting trees or going to college or whatever. And I have sometimes heard it said by one black person to another as a means of demeaning them for trying make improvements in their life out of jealousy or shame for them not doing the same. I have always understood this as a fucked-up social sabotage that sometimes occurs in the black community against other blacks. My black friends have told me this. It’s a twisted issue in that some blacks identify themselves with poverty and bad neighborhoods as a means of self and when anyone tries to improve themselves that it makes them less black. It’s some serious self-fulfilling prophecy type stuff that many black people try and do overcome. If it perpetuates, it adds to sad conditions already present in black communities and shown poignantly in this clip.

It’s infuriating that Kirsha Kaechele would use a phrase like that to justify her sense of belonging in St. Roch while in Tanzania for most of the year and only coming to New Orleans to check in or for Mardi Gras. That’s a very serious issue and it shows more than almost anything else in that interview how tritely she has dealt with this entire endeavor of hers.

Battling to keep the ‘real’ Venice afloat

I couldn’t help noticing the many parallels between Venice and New Orleans. Though, our situation doesn’t seem as dire yet.

But Venice also faces the problem of a dwindling population and an increasing influx of tourists that locals claim it is incapable of keeping up with.

Wouldn’t say New Orleans has ever been incapable of keeping up with its tourists but it does compromise it’s culture to them. Bourbon Street being the largest surrender. It used to be Jazz, Cocktails and Burlesque and now its karaoke, huge fucking beers and titty bars. The t-shirt shops continue to fight for more space and employ all sorts of tactics to do so. The next battleground might be Frenchmen Street. Thankfully, the neighborhoods have managed to stay out of this fight mostly.

But Secchi, a hotel owner, doesn’t blame the tourists; he is aware that the city needs them in order to survive. He and his supporters are lobbying Venice’s Mayor, Giorgio Orsoni, to diversify the city’s industry away from tourism so fewer residents will leave to take jobs on the mainland.

Other than tourism, Venice’s other industry is maritime interests, shipbuilding, a Navy base so on. There are also some textiles. New Orleans will always have a unique port (if it ever doesn’t that’s another, huge, issue) it also has universities, medicine and, let’s not forget our rich uncle, oil and gas (until, well, you know).

Secchi says Venice is “under attack by big business” and points to the advertising billboards that cover historic buildings being renovated, the cruise ships that sail into the city and houses bought up by corporations and left unoccupied.

Unoccupied houses by big business has always terrified me. While I am sure that exists in one way or the other in the French Quarter and surrounding areas it probably takes a different form in temporary owners who are only around part of the year. None of us hate America but what does it do to a neighborhood when a large portion of the homes are only occupied a few months out of the year if that?

It is this increasingly commercial aspect to the city, seen as necessary for boosting its finances, which prompted Venessia.com to stage their “Welcome to Veniceland” protest in 2010, in which members of the group paraded around Venice dressed as cartoon characters, lamenting what they see as the “Disney-fication” of their home.

They have an awe…amazing site! Welcome to Veniceland Also, see this map.

Environmental scientist and Venice resident Jane da Mosto says that the city’s problem with tourism could be better managed. She believes a basic tourist levy could help the city raise necessary funds to maintain its historic buildings. It’s money that has been hard to find in recent years, she says.

Okay, why?

Much of the money from Italy’s central government to the city has gone into funding the controversial billion-dollar MOSE flood defense project.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh.

“It’s a bet, of course, but I believe in it, in the sense that it has to achieve its goals,” said Paolo Canestrelli, Director of the Center of Tide Forecasting and Signage at the Municipality of Venice. “One doesn’t even discuss (the possibility of it not working), because having spent so many resources, and so much energy on a project that may not work — it doesn’t bear thinking about.”

It sounds like they are trying to WILL the water out.

She says that she sees Venice’s problems as a microcosm for those affecting many other cities across the world, and that “if you can fix it in Venice, it can be fixed everywhere else too.”

We are pulling for you.

Venessia.com – Pro Venice Web site

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Venice staged funeral