August | 2013 | Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans

Remember August 29, 2013

Posted by The Typist in cryptical envelopment, Debrisville, Federal Flood, geo-memoir, ghosts, home, Hurricane Katrina, je me souviens, levee, New Orleans, NOLA, Sinn Fein, The Dead, Toulouse Street, We Are Not OK.
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I am not sure when I made this graphic. Friends in the core group of NOLA Bloggers who came together after the storm were talking about draping the blogs in black back in ’06 or ’07. I thought this was just simpler. And strangely, it never occurred to me to post it today until this morning until someone I just met a few months ago made it their avatar on Facebook.

I supposed I knew at some deep level the anniversary was coming. I still get email from the Rising Tide conference that core group of bloggers spawned years ago, which continues even without a lot of its founders who have moved on, and that is always on the weekend before or after. Still, Katrina–what we came to call the Federal Flood–was not in my mind. I have other worries: a son struggling in his first days of college, an ill mother, a play I want to mount, troubled friends and lovers, a complicated life.

The story goes on: the new levee authority sues the oil companies, the levees such as they are, are as fixed as they’re going to get, the giant gap along Marconi Drive at the Orleans Canal pumping station included. The blighted houses remain, some with their fading residue of rescue marks. The new pumps as the canals will or will not work when the time comes, and the evidence of tests is mixed at best.

As busy as I am I can’t help but feel that I dishonor the ghosts I made a commitment to years ago. I think of the folder of bloated bodies I collected via news photographer friends, lost with my last computer. I think of the abandoned homes I still see in Gentilly, “[t]hese empty shells of former lives that line so many streets … the windows staring lifelessly at broken sidewalks, the facades washed pale and colorless.”

I spent my crisis day this week, the day I made a cocktail at 3:15 p.m.to steady myself for all of the news of that day, going out with a friend to eat sushi and see Jon Cleary and drink a little too much for a weeknight. Lest you think me irresponsible I did all I could to board and shore up the catastrophes of that day, and then went out to escape it for a few hours in pleasant company. It’s how we do. Before I went out I had to go sell some things from the house we bought when I uprooted my family and brought them here to the heart of a disaster zone. I sold some pots and trellises to the Michelle Kimble, a pre-eminent preservationist both before and after the storm, and we talked about a lot of things. The storm never came up. After she left I looked at some tile art my ex-wife had bought laying on the floor for this weekend’s sale, including one of St. Francis Cabrini church. I left it there for the sale.

With all my current problems and work perhaps I have reached the point I wrote about long ago before I abandoned the Katrina-blog Wet Bank Guide. ” If history and the city consumes us all one-by-one but the city lives on, that perhaps what was always intended, why we were all lured home. In the end, perhaps [Thomas] Pynchon has given us the model to surviving It’s After the End of the World. If history has gone too wrong for any one of us to stop what is happening around us, maybe it is better to amble down a shady street in New Orleans without a particular thought in my head except the distant sound of what might be [Tyrone] Slothrop’s harmonica, to disappear into the random noise in the signal.”

Odd Words August 29, 2013

Posted by The Typist in Toulouse Street.
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& Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. the Juju Bag Cafe, 5363 Franklin Ave., presents a Spoken Word Showcase, with happy hour from 5-7 and open mic starting at 7:30 p.m. Check whodatpoets.com for featured performers.

& Saturdays Maple Street Bookshop hosts Story Time with Miss Maureen at 11:30 a.m.

& Saturday night St. Louis National Slam Champion, Louis Konfliction, is the August feature for The Propeller. 4035 Washington Ave in New Orleans. Doors open 8:30 and the Show starts at 9pm. It’s a load of fun every month as the city’s best Poets, Comedians, and Singers rock Louisiana’s Largest Open Mic Venue. The event is hosted by Hero44, Shaddy Feel Good, and John Lacarbiere III. This month the three will also salute TEAM SNO for winning the National Slam two years in a row, Erika Murray for winning the NPS National Author of the Year, and Shaddy Feel Good for making the Final 4 of the Miller Lite National Comedy Competition. It will be an awesome show. Tickets are $12 in ADV and $15 at the door. Tickets can be purchased here: http://propellerstage.eventbrite.com. Doors at 8:30 p.m., show at 9 p.m.

& Sunday at 1 p.m. Octavia Books hosts storytime and a booksigning with Alex McConduit featuring his latest children’s picture books, THORN IN MY HORN, about a young musician in New Orleans who LOVES to play his horn. His mother, on the other hand, cannot stand to hear the noise! She’s literally a thorn in his horn! This beautiful book includes detailed illustrations by Darrell Rollo that accurately depict the French Quarter, Jackson Square and other iconic places in The Big Easy. THORN IN MY HORN is a rhyming, children’s picture book suitable for ages 3 and up.

& Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Maple Leaf Bar is the Maple Leaf Reading Series, the oldest continuous reading series in the south, founded by Everette Maddox. In the back patio, weather permitting. Periodic features and an open mic every Sunday.

Sunday is Slam and Spoken Word Day in New Orleans:

& Sunday at The Shadowbox Theater Team Slam New Orleans invites you to come celebrate with your 2013 National Poetry Slam champions.In addition to our regularly scheduled slam and open mic, the September show will feature a special 1 and 2 minute slam for poets tuning up for the Individual World Poetry Slam and the Texas Grand Slam Poetry Festival. 7 p.m. We will cap the open mic to make time for all of the awesome, so if you’d like to perform, please arrive early.

& WhoDatPoets.com lists four Spoken Word shows on Sunday nights:

The new Sunday show from Spoken Word New Orleans is Poetry and Paint Brushes. Spoken Word artists perform as a resident artist sketches the performers. Doors at 7 pm. and show at 8 pm. at Special Tea, 4337 Banks Street.
The Black Star Cafe, 800 Belleville St. in Algiers at 7 p.m.;
The Shadowbox Theater at 2400 St.Claude Ave. at 7 p.m.;
Espe’s Kitchen, 1743 N Broad St. at 7 p.m.; and,
the T—–y Wine Lounge, 3001 Tulane Ave., doors at 7 p.m., Admission $5.

For phone numbers with more details on all these readings visit WHODATPOETS.COM. (If I don’t block out the name of the location at 3001 Tulane, Facebook will reject my ad for promoting alcohol. Go figure.)

& Susan Larson, the former book editor of the former Times-Picayune newspaper and member of the National Book Critics Circle hosts The Reading Life on WWNO (89.9 FM) on Tuesdays at 1:30 p.m. She features interviews with authors of local and national interest.

& Tuesday at 4 p.m. Middle-grade readers will be fully engaged with two wonderful authors visiting Octavia Books together to present and sign brand new adventures. Margaret Peterson Haddix, author of THE NEW YORK TIMES bestselling THE MISSING series will present RISKED, where Jonah and Katherine journey to 1918 with the Romanov children. Lisa McMann comes to us with her new novel, ISLAND OF FIRE, where the magical world of Artime is gone and the unwanteds are looking to Alex Stowe for answers while his twin brother Aaron continues to build his army in Quill. But, a shocking twist reveals that Alex and Aaron share a common enemy more dangerous than either could have imagined.

& Maple Street Book Shop’s the First Tuesday Book Club will be reading the Pulitzer Prize winner The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson. The club will meet to discuss it Tuesday, September 3rd, at 5:30PM in our Uptown Shop.

& Tuesday evening at 7 p.m. the 1719 Reading Society, a collective of UNO, Loyola and Tulane students, will launch their fall 2013 season at the Columns Hotel. T. Rebecca Morgan Frank is September’s featured reader. She’ll be reading from her book, Little Murders Everywhere. Readings are free and open to the public. “As for me, I was merely an accessory.” In Rebecca Morgan Frank’ss remarkable first book, the line that launches a story about feeding an injured raptor morphs hauntingly into ars poetica: “I was the dark room, the leather glove, the rope.” And in between, the countless “little murders” — the road kill, the rodents, the surplus chicks from a factory farm — that keep a red-tailed hawk alive. Captured in this parable are both the ruthless devotion to beauty and the yet-more-ruthless devotion to clear-eyed rendering that make Little Murders Everywhere an extraordinary debut. The elegant formal variations in these poems, the structuring alliterations, the density and precision of the figurative imagination would almost suffice on their own but, wonderfully, they have no need to do so. They add up, as in all true poetry, to a way of seeing.”—Linda Gregerson

& On Tuesdays the Jefferson Parish Library Writers Group meets at the Westwego library from 7-9 pm.

& Every Tuesday night get on the list to spit at the longest running spoken word venue in New Orleans at Sweet Lorraine’s Jazz Club hosted by African-American Shakespear. Doors open at 7pm and the Mic pops at 8pm. It is $5 to get in.

Odd Words August 22, 2013

Posted by The Typist in books, literature, New Orleans, NOLA, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.
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August is winding down and at least one bookstore is back from Maine, or wherever it is fabulously wealthy indie bookstore owners go in August. (Just kidding).

& This Thursday Octavia Books presents James A. Cobb, Jr.’s FLOOD OF LIES. In August 2005, the world looked on in horror as thirty-five residents of St. Rita’s Nursing Home perished beneath the rising waters of Hurricane Katrina. Louisiana’s attorney general immediately targeted the owners of St. Rita’s, Sal and Mabel Mangano, for prosecution. A national media frenzy erupted, labeling the couple as selfish, cold-hearted killers, willing to let beloved parents and grandparents drown—but the reality was much different. Flood of Lies tells the real story of the Manganos: a couple who sacrificed everything to save the lives of their beloved residents. “When an elderly couple are charged with murder in the drowning deaths of thirty-five bed-ridden residents of St. Rita’s Nursing Home, an emotional edge-of-your-seat thriller takes off like a shot! The players: a wily and profane defense lawyer, a ferocious prosecutor, devastated families of the victims, and a ravenous media that brands the defendants ‘Monsters of Hurricane Katrina.’ My advice—block out enough time to read this wonderful book in one sitting.”
—John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

& Saturdays Maple Street Bookshop hosts Story Time with Miss Maureen at 11:30 a.m.

& Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Maple Leaf Bar is the Maple Leaf Reading Series, the oldest continuous reading series in the south, founded by Everette Maddox. This week poet Valentine Pierce reads from her work, followed by an open mike. In the back patio, weather permitting. Periodic features and an open mic every Sunday.

& WhoDatPoets.com lists four Spoken Word shows on Sunday nights:

The new Sunday show from Spoken Word New Orleans is Poetry and Paint Brushes. Spoken Word artists perform as a resident artist sketches the performers. Doors at 7 pm. and show at 8 pm. at Special Tea, 4337 Banks Street.
The Black Star Cafe, 800 Belleville St. in Algiers at 7 p.m.;
The Shadowbox Theater at 2400 St.Claude Ave. at 6 p.m.;
Espe’s Kitchen, 1743 N Broad St. at 7 p.m.;

and,
<li<the T*e*r*p* Wine Lounge, 3001 Tulane Ave., doors at 9 p.m., Admission $5.

& On Tuesdays the Jefferson Parish Library Writers Group meets at the Westwego library from 7-9 pm.

& Tuesday at Cafe Istanbul Art Klub of New Orleans hosts Literary Speaking at Cafe Istanbul hosted by Ben Mintz of NOLA Defender and featuring writers Chuck Perkins, Moose Jackson and Ross Peter Nelson. $5 or FREE for Art Klub Members (click “get tickets” to become a member now). Event at 7 p.m. “Open Jelly” microphone follows at $10.

Wednesday at 4 p.m. Octavia Books features a children’s book event: Farmer Brown and all the cows reunite this August as children’s book author Doreen Cronin and illustrator Betsy Lewin are releasing a brand new picture book CLICK, CLACK, BOO! And, they are on their way to Octavia Books to meet you, and read and sign book for you. Farmer Brown does not like Halloween. So he draws the shades, puts on his footy pajamas, and climbs into bed. But do you think the barnyard animals have any respect for a man in footy pajamas? No, they do not. For them, the Halloween party has just begun. And we all know these critters far prefer tricks over treats. 1There are big surprises in store for Farmer Brown! Doreen Cronin is the author of many bestselling picture books, including Thump, Quack, Moo: A Whacky Adventure; Bounce; Wiggle; Duck for President; Giggle, Giggle, Quack; Dooby Dooby Moo; and the Caldecott Honor Book Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type

& This Wednesday in the back room of Buffa’s Bar, poet and artist Thaddeus Conti presents a performance of Felonious Drunk and his Unmentionables reunion tour, a lounge act performance piece. Buffa’s open mic follows and welcomes all performers.

Hibernation August 18, 2013

Posted by The Typist in Toulouse Street.
Tags: anais nin
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everything and nothing August 16, 2013

Posted by The Typist in cryptical envelopment, New Orleans, Poetry, Toulouse Street.
Tags: birthday, Charles Bukowski, something for the touts
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Happy Birthday Charles Bukowski.

something for the touts, the nuns, the grocery clerks and you…

we have everything and we have nothing
and some men do it in churches
and some men do it by tearing butterflies
in half
and some men do it in Palm Springs
laying it into butterblondes
with Cadillac souls
Cadillacs and butterflies
nothing and everything,
the face melting down to the last puff
in a cellar in Corpus Christi.
there’s something for the touts, the nuns,
the grocery clerks and you . . .
something at 8 a.m., something in the library
something in the river,
everything and nothing.
in the slaughterhouse it comes running along
the ceiling on a hook, and you swing it —
one
two
three
and then you’ve got it, $200 worth of dead
meat, its bones against your bones
something and nothing.
it’s always early enough to die and
it’s always too late,
and the drill of blood in the basin white
it tells you nothing at all
and the gravediggers playing poker over
5 a.m. coffee, waiting for the grass
to dismiss the frost . . .
they tell you nothing at all.

we have everything and we have nothing —
days with glass edges and the impossible stink
of river moss — worse than shit;
checkerboard days of moves and countermoves,
fagged interest, with as much sense in defeat as
in victory; slow days like mules
humping it slagged and sullen and sun-glazed
up a road where a madman sits waiting among
bluejays and wrens netted in and sucked a flakey
grey.
good days too of wine and shouting, fights
in alleys, fat legs of women striving around
your bowels buried in moans,
the signs in bullrings like diamonds hollering
Mother Capri, violets coming out of the ground
telling you to forget the dead armies and the loves
that robbed you.
days when children say funny and brilliant things
like savages trying to send you a message through
their bodies while their bodies are still
alive enough to transmit and feel and run up
and down without locks and paychecks and
ideals and possessions and beetle-like
opinions.
days when you can cry all day long in
a green room with the door locked, days
when you can laugh at the breadman
because his legs are too long, days
of looking at hedges . . .

and nothing, and nothing, the days of
the bosses, yellow men
with bad breath and big feet, men
who look like frogs, hyenas, men who walk
as if melody had never been invented, men
who think it is intelligent to hire and fire and
profit, men with expensive wives they possess
like 60 acres of ground to be drilled
or shown-off or to be walled away from
the incompetent, men who’d kill you
because they’re crazy and justify it because
it’s the law, men who stand in front of
windows 30 feet wide and see nothing,
men with luxury yachts who can sail around
the world and yet never get out of their vest
pockets, men like snails, men like eels, men
like slugs, and not as good . . .
and nothing, getting your last paycheck
at a harbor, at a factory, at a hospital, at an
aircraft plant, at a penny arcade, at a
barbershop, at a job you didn’t want
anyway.
income tax, sickness, servility, broken
arms, broken heads — all the stuffing
come out like an old pillow.

we have everything and we have nothing.
some do it well enough for a while and
then give way. fame gets them or disgust
or age or lack of proper diet or ink
across the eyes or children in college
or new cars or broken backs while skiing
in Switzerland or new politics or new wives
or just natural change and decay —
the man you knew yesterday hooking
for ten rounds or drinking for three days and
three nights by the Sawtooth mountains now
just something under a sheet or a cross
or a stone or under an easy delusion,
or packing a bible or a golf bag or a
briefcase: how they go, how they go! — all
the ones you thought would never go.

days like this. like your day today.
maybe the rain on the window trying to
get through to you. what do you see today?
what is it? where are you? the best
days are sometimes the first, sometimes
the middle and even sometimes the last.
the vacant lots are not bad, churches in
Europe on postcards are not bad. people in
wax museums frozen into their best sterility
are not bad, horrible but not bad. the
cannon, think of the cannon, and toast for
breakfast the coffee hot enough you
know your tongue is still there, three
geraniums outside a window, trying to be
red and trying to be pink and trying to be
geraniums, no wonder sometimes the women
cry, no wonder the mules don’t want
to go up the hill. are you in a hotel room
in Detroit looking for a cigarette? one more
good day. a little bit of it. and as
the nurses come out of the building after
their shift, having had enough, eight nurses
with different names and different places
to go — walking across the lawn, some of them
want cocoa and a paper, some of them want a
hot bath, some of them want a man, some
of them are hardly thinking at all. enough
and not enough. arcs and pilgrims, oranges
gutters, ferns, antibodies, boxes of
tissue paper.

in the most decent sometimes sun
there is the softsmoke feeling from urns
and the canned sound of old battleplanes
and if you go inside and run your finger
along the window ledge you’ll find
dirt, maybe even earth.
and if you look out the window
there will be the day, and as you
get older you’ll keep looking
keep looking
sucking your tongue in a little
ah ah no no maybe

some do it naturally
some obscenely
everywhere.

The Wrath of Frog August 15, 2013

Posted by The Typist in A Fiction, cryptical envelopment, New Orleans, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street.
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Great lashings of rain like the wrath of Frog making the world over for the sins of men. Streets run rivulets & storm wash (do not cross when) peaked in white & swallowing cars & lapping at the stoups iron storm covers dance & rattle & the beer can chicken bone cigarette butt flotsam tumbles past visions of the sins we ought repent but every flood passes in its time & in the low lots all frogdom will sing with delight & we will sit again on the stoup with beer & cigarette & listen & take joy in their singing.

Odd Words August 14, 2013

Posted by The Typist in books, literature, New Orleans, novel, Odd Words, Poetry, publishing, spoken word, Toulouse Street.
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Yes, it’s August so there’s not much to list. This week’s featured event is the Esoterotica fundraiser for Storyville Rising! If you’re a hot mess this week and an erotic evening sounds like something you are, um, up for, do check it out. It’s one of the best performance and writing open mics in town.

Also, today is the last day to submit entries in the Tennessee Williams Festival Poetry Contest for 2014. Judge will be former poet laureate Robert Pinsky. Details and guidelines are here: http://con13.tennesseewilliams.net/poetry-contest/

& Saturdays Maple Street Bookshop hosts Story Time with Miss Maureen at 11:30 a.m.

& WhoDatPoets.com lists four Spoken Word shows on Sunday nights:

The new Sunday show from Spoken Word New Orleans is Poetry and Paint Brushes. Spoken Word artists perform as a resident artist sketches the performers. Doors at 7 pm. and show at 8 pm. at Special Tea, 4337 Banks Street.
The Black Star Cafe, 800 Belleville St. in Algiers at 7 p.m.;
The Shadowbox Theater at 2400 St.Claude Ave. at 6 p.m.;
Espe’s Kitchen, 1743 N Broad St. at 7 p.m.;

and,
<li<the T*e*r*p* Wine Lounge, 3001 Tulane Ave., doors at 9 p.m., Admission $5.

& On Tuesdays the Jefferson Parish Library Writers Group meets at the Westwego library from 7-9 pm.

& Also Wednesday at 8 pm Esoterotica’s local provocateurs not only bring you ’50 Shades of Esoterotica’ An Evening of All Original Kink and Fetish Erotica… but also, a prelude to and Fundraiser for the upcoming Storyville Rising Erotic Arts Festival! And as such we will have a host of inspired delights for you to indulge in. Storyville Rising! is a multi-sensory experience devoted to erotic arts in all its forms, music, dance, literature and more… For more information about it and all its sensual delights, see the event posting: https://www.facebook.com/events/146813455516596/

Certainly August 13, 2013

Posted by The Typist in A Fiction, New Orleans, quotes, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street.
Tags: anais nin
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Consummation of Grief August 9, 2013

Posted by The Typist in cryptical envelopment, New Orleans, Poetry, Toulouse Street.
Tags: Charles Bukowski, Consumation of Grief
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Omitting the obvious (for me) GD graphic out of respect for the dead.

I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines. . .
it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.

— Charles Bukowski

Odd Words August 7, 2013

Posted by The Typist in books, literature, New Orleans, novel, Odd Words, Poetry, publishing, Toulouse Street.
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Summertime, and the living is queasy. Sun’s so hot, the heat index so high. If you were an author would you want to bring your book tour to New Orleans in August? I didn’t think so. This week is mostly regular, recurring events. Fall however is right around the corner, and that will mean the return of events like the 1718 Reading Series at the Columns Hotel and other reading venues around town. August is the perfect time to grab that fat book you’ve been holding onto unread all this time. Just collapse in the A/C or, if you’re an old-fashioned soul, on the porch under the fan and try to forget the heat. Ice tea helps. Pimm’s Cups help even better.

& Every 1st, 2nd, and 4th Friday catch one of the city’s newest spots… TURNT UP FRIDAYS Live In The Treme at Garage Cafe 1532 Dumaine St. New Orleans. Open Mic format with weekly features. Hosted by Blue Orleenz and Sabrina Hayes. $6 to get in

& Saturdays Maple Street Bookshop hosts Story Time with Miss Maureen at 11:30 a.m. This week’s featured book is The Story of Babar the Little Elephant by Jean de Brunhoff. Translated from Jean de Brunhoff’s original French, the adventures of the world’s most popular elephant and his friends have enchanted three generations.

& Saturday Night at 7 p.m. TENDE RLOIN magazine’s choicest reading series”is slitting itself wide open in August!” Come poets and performers and fiction writers and riffraff.

& WhoDatPoets.com lists four Spoken Word shows on Sunday nights: The new Sunday show from Spoken Word New Orleans is Poetry and Paint Brushes. Spoken Word artists perform as a resident artist sketches the performers. Doors at 7 pm. and show at 8 pm. at Special Tea, 4337 Banks Street. There are also open mics at The Black Star Cafe, 800 Belleville St. in Algiers at 7 p.m.; The Shadowbox Theater at 2400 St.Claude Ave. at 6 p.m.; Espe’s Kitchen, 1743 N Broad St. at 7 p.m.; and, the T****** Wine Lounge, 3001 Tulane Ave., doors at 9 p.m., Admission $5. For phone numbers with more details on all these readings visit WHODATPOETS.COM. (If I don’t block out the name of the location at 3001 Tulane, Facebook will reject my ad for promoting alcohol. Go figure.)

& Tuesday evening at 6 p.m. Octavia Books hosts a book signing and reading with New Orleans author George Bishop featuring his hew novel, NIGHT OF THE COMET. From acclaimed author of Letter to My Daughter George Bishop—hailed by Pat Conroy as a “novelist to keep your eye on”—comes THE NIGHT OF THE COMET. This engrossing coming-of-age tale deftly conveys the hopes and heartaches of adolescence, the unfulfilled dreams that divide a family, and the subtle class distinctions that shape a community, played out against the backdrop of a small southern town in 1973.

& On Tuesdays the Jefferson Parish Library Writers Group meets at the Westwego library from 7-9 pm.

Death Not Yet August 4, 2013

Posted by The Typist in New Orleans, Poetry, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street.
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Build the funerary urn
with mud & spit,
bit by bit under
an unconcerned sun
which none-the-less will
harden it shard by shard
until the last spittle
is dabbed from your chin.

Build the funeral pyre
twig by stick
bit by bit beside
the muddy river,
ashes from flashes
& dust to muck
by summer thunder after
the last match is struck.

This much is required.
The woman lying between
you & the muddy river,
beneath the shade tree,
flower necklace on her breast
& serenade of bird song:
her you must earn &
treasure while you may.

Remember August 3, 2013

Posted by The Typist in Toulouse Street.
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Original and this version of Remember CopyLeft Mark Folse, 2007. Song used by Letter of Marque and Reprisal Against Death Upon Land or Sea issues by the sovereign Republic of Orleans/Republique d’Orleans.

Greg Peters August 3, 2013

Posted by The Typist in Bloggers, cryptical envelopment, je me souviens, New Orleans, NOLA Blogroll, Remember, Toulouse Street, We Are Not OK.
Tags: Greg Peters, Suspect Device
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“Sing, Goddess, the wrath of Achilles.”
–Homer, opening of the Illiad

No, that’s not right. Greg Peters was so much more than the wrath of Suspect Device and so much the opposite of the boastful Achilles. What I most remember was the last conversation we had. He was sitting alone at a table at Mimi’s before the Krewe du Vieux parade, and I don’t remember a word we spoke. I just remember an easy manner, a smile like a child at once guilty and proud of what mischief he had done, the smile of a bashful teenage lover, looking down a bit when he smiled lest someone catch him at it. Beneath the public exterior of satirical cartoonist and ranting blogger was the soul of a genuine Buddhist, an easy compassion and acceptance of the world that perhaps masked an acceptance of mortality. He sat that night at ease among friends and yet distant, as if he were already leaving, sitting alone at his table receiving visitors, so many not knowing it would be the last time they would speak.

No, not an acceptance of mortality. This is going all wrong. Greg had the word “indestructible” tattooed on his forearm a short while ago. Words, ink: he was only going to fall with his pen in his hand, with a samurai beauty that combined a fierce defiance and a Zen certainty of bliss beyond death. That word spoke of his love of his young sons, the companionship of a good woman and many friends, so much he was not at age 50 ready to leave behind, so much more for a lightening-fired mind yet to do.

We were all thrown together by the storm, a collection of ranting and lamenting bloggers who fell together into an indivisible friendship. We birthed an anarchist conference called Rising Tide, “A conference on the future of New Orleans” and Greg was our artist. Each poster and t-shirt topped the last, the best the rough angel rising from the waters. Rising Tide has moved onto to a 501(c)3 with paperwork and committees and most of us who were there at the beginning fell away from that but never lost each other. At the center of that group was a meeting of minds and hearts larger than the rest, Greg’s (with Ashley Morris’s) largest of all.

We knew of his heart problems from the first. After his first surgery at a distant heart clinic fellow organized a collection to get him a Macbook so he could continue to work in his convalescence. We knew that heart of steel had a fatal flaw, one that would one day break and leave him holding the haft and staring Death in the face.

A heart of steel is no guarantee except against despair. Invincible until the end. We should all go so well.

Oṃ tāre tuttāre ture svāhā. I don’t know if Greg followed the Taras, the female Buddha, but he modeled so many of her aspects: Green Tārā, known as the Buddha of enlightened activity; Red Tārā, of fierce aspect associated with magnetizing all good things; Blue Tārā, associated with transmutation of anger. In the end White Tārā, also known for compassion, long life, healing and serenity, took him into her bosom, recognizing his compassion and serenity through so much suffering. It was enough for this one soul to advance. Oṃ tāre tuttāre ture svāhā.

Greg left us too soon but he carved a path through the world large enough most men would happily call it a life. Tārā Mother of Liberation, teach me to walk in his footsteps.

Odd Words August 1, 2013

Posted by The Typist in books, literature, New Orleans, Odd Words, Poetry, Toulouse Street.
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& This Thursday join Octavia Books at 6 p.m. for a presentation and signing with Lolis Eric Elie celebrating the release of his new book, TREME: Stories and Recipes from the Heart of New Orleans. Joining Lolis for the event will notable contributors including: Chef Allison Vines-Rushing, MiLa restaurant; Randy Fertel, author of THE GORILLA MAN AND THE EMPRESS OF STEAK; Chef Paulette Rittenberg; Bartender Marvin Allen, Carousel Bar at The Hotel Monteleone; Poppy Tooker, Host of Louisiana Eats; Chef Mary Sonnier, Kingfish; Chef Jackie Blanchard, Restaurant August. Inspired by David Simon’s award-winning HBO series Treme, this celebration of the culinary spirit of post-Katrina New Orleans features recipes and tributes from the characters, real and fictional, who highlight the Crescent City’s rich foodways.

& Thursday at Maple Street Books at p.m. Bennett Sims will be signing his book A Questionable Shape at our Uptown shop. “A Questionable Shape [published by Two-Dollar Radio] is a novel for those who read in order to wake up to life, not escape it, for those who themselves like to explore the frontiers of the unsayable. I envision the core readership as brilliant and slightly disaffected men and women… fans of Anne Carson, Nicholson Baker, Rivka Galchen, Juan Rulfo, W.G. Sebald, Henry and William James, and gaggles of Russian and German writers. [A Questionable Shape] is more than just a novel. It is literature. It is life.”—The Millions

& Friday night at 7 pm McKeown’s Books and Difficult Music hosts their 1+1+1 poetry reading (in which a poet is selected, who selects a 2nd, who selects a third). Featured at this event are Poet No. 1 Laura Mattingly, Dennis Formento and Mark Folse. Mattingly is the author of the collection The Book of Incorporation. Formento is the author of Looking for an Out Place. Mark Folse is the publisher of Odd Words, New Orleans weekly literary listing.

& Also on Friday at 7 p.m. The Melanated Writers Collective is organizing From Rage 2 Page: A Literary Protest is an open mic/literary protest calling all writers to share their works as they relate to race and the outrage over the killing of Trayvon Martin. There will be 17 slots to pay tribute to the age Trayvon Martin was when he was murdered. Each participant will have 3 minutes max to read/share. First come, first-served basis. The event will be at Indigo: The Joan Mitchell Center, 2275 Bayou Road.

& Saturdays Maple Street Bookshop hosts Story Time with Miss Maureen at 11:30 a.m.

& This month’s Poetry Buffet is relocating to the Rosa F. Keller library, 4300 Broad Street, due to construction at the Latter. Featured will be Megan Burns, Nik De Dominic and Nancy Harris.

& The First Tuesday Book Club at Maple Street Book Shop will be meeting Tuesday, August 6th, at 5:45PM at our Uptown location, to discuss In the Sanctuary of Outcasts.

& Tuesday at 6 p.m. Octavia Books hosts Nancy Harris and Melinda Palacio sharing poems from their newest collections. In BEAUTY EATING BEAUTY, Harris shows her wit and craft of wordplay. Palacio’s poetry in HOW FIRE IS A STORY, WAITING creates images that are at once heart-breaking and humorous. Come sit, listen, connect with poetry, and bring home signed copies of the work of these fine New Orleans poets.

& Also on Tuesday at 6 p.m. Maple Street Book Shop features James Cobb signing Flood of Lies. “When an elderly couple are charged with murder in the drowning deaths of thirty-five bed-ridden residents of St. Rita’s Nursing Home, an emotional edge-of-your-seat thriller takes off like a shot. The players: a wily and profane defense lawyer, a ferocious prosecutor, devastated families of the victims, and a ravenous media that brands the defendants ‘Monsters of Hurricane Katrina.’ In August 2005, the world looked on in horror as thirty-five residents of St. Rita’s Nursing Home perished beneath the rising waters of Hurricane Katrina. Louisiana’s attorney general immediately targeted the owners of St. Rita’s, Sal and Mabel Mangano, for prosecution. A national media frenzy erupted, labeling the couple as selfish, cold-hearted killers, willing to let beloved parents and grandparents drown, but the reality was much different. Flood of Lies tells the real story of the Manganos: a couple who sacrificed everything to save the lives of their beloved residents

& On Tuesdays the Jefferson Parish Library Writers Group meets at the Westwego library from 7-9 pm.

& Every Tuesday night get on the list to spit at the longest running spoken word venue in New Orleans at Sweet Lorraine’s Jazz Club hosted by African-American Shakespear. This Tuesday you don’t want to miss the New Orleans Slam Team goes head-to-head with Team SNO. Doors open at 7pm and the Mic pops at 8pm. It is $5 to get in.

& This Wednesday in the back room of Buffa’s Bar, poet and artist Thaddeus Conti presents a performance of Felonious Drunk and his Unmentionables reunion tour, a lounge act performance piece.