August | 2015 | Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans

He had won the victory over himself August 30, 2015

Posted by The Typist in New Orleans, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street.
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“Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”

— George Orwell, 1984

No.

Unremembering August 29, 2015

Posted by The Typist in New Orleans, postdiluvian, The Journey, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street.
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You are a young soul, I think, he said, and not much troubled by ghosts.

Ghosts, she said, without the inflection of a question, but as if he had said pixies or unicorns, and with a just perceptible wrinkling of the features as if sniffing a carton of milk and pronouncing it spoiled.

You believe in ghosts? Have you seen one? And what exactly do you mean?

You have watched too much bad television, he replied. You don’t need to see them. He took another large swallow of his drink. It was a party, a deliberate unremembering party, and he was venturing into topics forbidden to the guests. They are just a sense of the age of a place, like the dust somewhere neglected but not quit as corporeal, not even as dust to dust. You sense them in things, such as the sagging of these old houses, and the noises they make settling into the earth, like old men sinking into their rocking chairs.

Uh, huh, she said, taking an ironic sip from her Stella Artois to punctuate her response. I thought ghosts were the spirits of the dead, some lingering part of a person’s consciousness, someone with unfinished business or some neurotic compulsion.

There is much unfinished business here, or rather there is finished business of an unpleasant sort. This is an old place, built by slaves and poor immigrants set to unpleasant tasks such as digging the old canal that is now a freeway and a long park. They buried the poor Irishmen who dug it in the spoil bank as they fell, you know. It’s like the old saying about an unlucky place: built on an Indian graveyard,. And then there are all those who died of the fevers, settling at the edge of a mosquito infested swamp. All this before the flood, and the guns.

That was all long ago, old man, she said, and has nothing to do with me. I look at these old houses, all gutted and rebuilt, the way they have been painted to highlight the oldwork of the facades. It’s as pretty as some corner of Europe. Everything is being rebuilt so beautifully.That is why we come here. From what I’m told, the flood was the best thing that could have happened here, washing away your old ghosts but leaving these houses ready for fixing up. They probably were never as beautiful as they are today.

That is because you are a young soul. You don’t see the beauty that was there before, even as the weatherboards weathered, and the porches sagged like a middle-aged stomach. They were beautiful when they were painted in plain white wash, when they were built by night by men who worked all day, to make a home of their own for their families. They were built simple but sturdy. Once the walls were plaster-and-lath, and the houses could breathe. Now that is all torn out and if they are not sealed up like coffins for the new air conditioning, the mildew creeps past the mill work and onto the walls. When they were plastered, carefully applied trowel by trowel across the delicate lathe work, that would not have happened. But so much of that was torn out, a bit of the soul of the house put out to the curb. The dust of it that lingers, that is a sort of ghost.

We still have plaster, and bargeboard floors. We bought our house because it was old, because it still had those things.

And you appreciate their beauty, or simply their potential appreciation?

What does that mean? Why do you talk in riddles?

They are only riddles to you because you are a young soul.

Again with souls and ghosts. Another sip of beer. We appreciate the house’s beauty. That’s why we bought it, cheap and rundown, and are putting it not just back together but back together better. And it is “it’s” appreciation. It is a thing, not a person. Sorry, I’m a teacher, and people here have laziest habits of speech. Now all the schools are new, and we can help lift the people up out of that laziness, make them ready for a brighter future. We just need to break their old habits and teach them proper speech, punctuality, and careful work. This will be a much better place for our coming, out contribution

What you call their lazy habits of speech are just another sort of ghost, the lingering gendering of things from the time when French was still spoken. We are not a lazy people. Who do you think built your beautiful house, its strong bones without which it would not be there for your to fix? Is it lazy to value time over money, and spend it freely? You may pile up all the money you might ever want, but it won’t buy you more time. I don’t mean what you, in your teacherly fashion, would call free time, but one’s own time, owned in a sense by yourself, time spent lingering over coffee mid-afternoon instead of running back to sell your time for money. What you might think laziness, a luxury you must steal away every now and then to enjoy, free time as in freedom to spend it with friends, or in a book, instead of watching time slip away on a cheap plastic clock on the wall waiting for your free time to begin.

That’s not the way the world works, old man. Time is money, and that money pays to fix up our house and all these others.

The world has its own notions of time, and we have ours. The two are not so far apart as your’s is.

More beer, buying time to think.

Whatever, was still all she could muster. People like you need to realize this is a different city now. Your ghosts and your excuses and your old notions were washed away. It will be a better city, keeping enough of the old to be charming, but not left behind the times as it was before.

Perhaps it was better to be left behind, he said, to amble along as we did than to march in lockstep to the ticking of a clock. I have lived in other places, you know, for many years. I have marched dutifully into work at the appointed time, mowed my lawn as required, and even chiseled the plow-melt snow on my corner lot up to the curb where the sidewalks crossed. I waged war on the dandelion and for what? So that someone could walk their dog along a perfect sidewalk past identical lawns undistracted from their podcast, or admiring the colorful repetition flats of annuals dutifully planted provides? I never did that, myself. I only planted perennials. Not as colorful except at their appointed bloom time, but themselves a sort of clock or calendar running on a time uninterrupted by the clangor of appointments on your smart watch.

Uh huh, again. I’m going to get another beer.

Enjoy the party, he said. She didn’t answer. He walked away from the crowd, none of whom smoked, out to the sidewalk and lit a cigarette, trading a bit of lifetime for the pleasure of it, mindless of the consequences. He watched as someone at the corner carried plastic sacks of groceries from their tiny, hybrid car into the door set at an angle to the corner, and wondered if they knew why it was built that way, framed by what they called two picture windows which did not look out onto any sort of vista as a proper picture window would because, he knew ( but suspected they did not), they were meant to be looked into and not out of. The blinds were drawn tight and his gaze wandered off down the street with no particular purpose in mind.

Ten. August 28, 2015

Posted by The Typist in 504ever, 8-29, Federal Flood, Flood, ghosts, je me souviens, New Orleans, postdiluvian, Shield of Beauty, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street.
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Again.

Three years August and the storms are being named like epic ships, a doom upon our shore, and I think of the levees still leaking and of the flood-walls patched with paper mache, our Potemkin defenses are not ready and we are not ready and the Big One is out there, invisible, a mighty wind, waiting for us. Someone empties a pistol into the night and I think of Jessica and Chanel and Helen and Dinerral as I watch the MPs in their Humvees roll by like armored ghosts. I think of the streets running into blocks running into miles of houses houses houses houses houses empty eyed with plywood doors and ragged lawns. And I think I’ll have another drink and light another cigarette and then another drink and then–I stop thinking. That is when this thought comes into my head. It is a compulsion, like biting ones nails until they smart and bleed, this thought that what we blog may not be our Genesis but an Apocalypse, the history of the end. And yet we stay because to live here is to walk through wrack and ruin counting the flowers in the weeds and discover you are not alone, everywhere there are people smiling, people with crumpled souls and rough stomachs, suffering what you are suffering, worse than you are suffering, suffering beyond your imagining and all for the sake of this place, because they see this city as you do, because they are the figures in the frame that make the landscape. A terrible beauty spills out of their eyes like tears and bathes the city in light.

~ Fini ~

In The Zone August 28, 2015

Posted by The Typist in Federal Flood, FYYFF, Hurricane Katrina, je me souviens, Memory, New Orleans, postdiluvian, Remember, Sinn Fein, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street, We Are Not OK.
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The reconstruction of the city around me will last at least as long as WWII. There will be long periods of boredom and routine punctuated by times of great excitement, much of that of the unpleasant kind. Yes, we will have shore leave for Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest but most of our time will be spent scrapping rust and paint knowing all the while that just over the ocean’s horizon there is something threatening.

In this peculiar armada the officers are as useless as the French nobility. They look fine high up there in their crosswise hats and give marvelous speeches, but we know from hard experience that they are worthless. People mutter all around the city about mutiny of one form or another, but mutiny is a lot of damn work and it is awfully hot. I like to think we could yet rise up and have our storming of the Bastille moment but every passing day it seems more unlikely. No Fletcher Christian or Maximilien Robespierre has stepped forward to lead us, and every angry mob needs a leader.

Perhaps I ask for too much. If history and the city consumes us all one-by-one but the city lives on, that perhaps what was always intended, why were were all lured home. In the end, perhaps 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 Slothrop’s harmonica, to disappear into the random noise in the signal.

And death shall have no dominion August 27, 2015

Postdiluvian August 26, 2015

“It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.”

Resurrection Fern August 24, 2015

Posted by The Typist in Back of Town, je me souviens, New Orleans, postdiluvian, Remember, The Journey, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street.
Tags: Grandfather Cypress, oaktrees, resurrection ferm, spanish moss, The Federal Flood
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How long their beards have grown in ten years, the oaks along Roosevelt Mall. The wind, such as it was and the coast got the worst of it, stripped away much of the Spanish Moss from the oaks that stood through it all. Ten years, and now it hangs in long, Confucian threads, the oaks like monks who have stood in long silence on the high ground on what was once the spoil bank of Bayou Metairie. The Great Depression, the men who came and built much of the old park around them, the hump bridges that gave a thrill to the stomach, the widely spaced row of chiseled concrete eagles along the Mall, were as the brief passage of a gnat.

The moss is back, the Resurrection fern that lines the branches–taking its name from its habit of drying brown during dry spells but coming back after a grain, and some small fan palm has rooted in the crooks of a few where the wide base trunk divides into the branches, the lowest of which tend back toward the ground as they lengthen, granting easy access for adventurous children to scramble into the trees. The oldest oaks, the ones with names and stories–Dueling Oak, Suicide Oak, and another name I heard the other day and have forgotten because it has not been repeated since childhood–are old, older than any building in the city, older than the arrival of Europeans.

The idea that the oldest grow on the spoil bank of Bayou Metairie, the last bit of which is the one natural lagoon in the park, the one south and parallel to City Park Avenue, came to me the other day walking out for cigarettes from my girlfriend’s house in south Metairie. The crazy job of which you have heard too much of late in these virtual pages, the one that keeps me trapped in the house rather than out noticing the oaks, has started me smoking again. It was Sunday morning, and I have developed the habit of going out for a really dark cup of coffee, not the weak store-brand Colombian she buys. I needed cigarettes and set out first down toward Dolly’s gas and cafe, taking the next cross street to Canal Boulevard and there I found a cypress of incredible girth, and a crown the size of a hot air balloon, which I immediately christened Grandfather Cypress. My arms (not the longest) stretched out encompassed a third a best, perhaps only a quarter of the trunk. This tree, I thought, was so much older than south Lakeview, older than the spur track just south that grew up along what was once the Lafitte Canal toward downtown, older than Metairie Road when it was a farm-and-cattle track before the bayou was filled in ,older than the cemeteries sited at the back of town to bury the yellow fever dead far out-of-town. I have never seen a cypress of such size but I am a city boy. This tree clearly predates the city.

On my way back from coffee (in the opposite direction, up the boulevard and back toward the L&N line), I went out of my way and passed the shortest cross-street home in spite of the early morning heat of a record-setting August to see this tree again. The current owner of the house was out watering her front garden, and we spoke for a bit. The crown was once even larger, and she had called an arborist to have it cut back a bit, to make sure it would weather any storm. She told me once she described the three she didn’t have to give her address. The man know it well, a tree familiar to those whose care for trees. I did not kneel as I had meant when I broke open a cigarette and sprinkled some tobacco as an offering and said a silent prayer, much as I had on my way out when I stood in silence several minutes, my hand against its trunk. I explained before I started how I had come back to do just that, and she just smiled. She had bought the house, she said, because of that three.

Ten years since the last Great Flood, what I once called the Federal Flood for the failure of the levees, but to Grandfather Cypress and the old oaks on the river end of the park it is simply the last great flood. They have weathered many, no doubt, and survived. The City survives as well, rebuilt by what I called the 200,000, those who came back in the first year and rebuilt it with their own hands and the help of a flood of immigrants from Latin America, the children of people who built even greater cities and saw them abandoned back to the forest, or destroyed by Spanish conquistadors, the bricks of their temples taken to build the new cathedral and palaces. i wonder if they think at all of the transformations their ancestors underwent, or if they just think of the beer and dinner at the end of the day, of a weekly remittance to family back home wired from the corner store now well stocked with familiar baked goods and tubs of iced, cold Modelo.

We have our own conquistadors in our own small way, the influx settling into and transforming the old neighborhoods in the sliver by the river, the high ground running down from downtown toward the mouth of the river, come to bring us Yankee ingenuity and industriousness while they take the pleasure of an entirely different culture which does not care so much of such things, and which may or may not survive their arrival, the resulting dispersal from their old neighborhoods of the people who made that culture. That is all the worry these days, in the bands of land from which the old trees were cleared hundreds of years ago.

I don’t live down there, and while I find it regrettable that they come as the Spanish came, greedy and bearing an alien religion in which the dollar sign supplants the cross of the Jesuits I live in the back of town, where the oldest trees survive, and now think more of them. The culture of the dollar at all costs has pushed nature too far, and I walk past grandfather oak in the warmest August since records began in the 1880s. Worse, the best minds tell us we have pushed the oceans themselves past the tipping point already. These will steadily warm, the distant arctic ices will melt and the water rise as sure as Noah’s flood. Other’s argue about whether the levees are really any better but I know that New Orleans is doomed, if not in my life time than in my children’s and their children’s. A greater flood is coming than the old oaks and cypress have ever seen, one that will not recede. Even the resilient cypress, accustomed to flooding, will not survive. Grandfather Cypress has seen his day in which the minutes are decades, in which we are less than the passing buzz of a mosquito.

Odd Words August 23, 2015

Posted by The Typist in Book Stores, book-signing, books, bookstores, literature, Louisiana, New Orleans, novel, Odd Words, Poetry, reading, spoken word, Toulouse Street, Writing.
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This coming week in literary New Orleans:

& Monday at 6 pm Octavia Books hosts a reading and signing with author Ellen Urbani celebrating her new novel, LANDFALL. Two mothers and their teenage daughters, whose lives collide in a fatal car crash, take turns narrating Ellen Urbani’s breathtaking novel, Landfall, set in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Eighteen-year-olds Rose and Rosebud have never met but they share a birth year, a name, and a bloody pair of sneakers. Rose’s quest to atone for the accident that kills Rosebud, a young woman so much like herself but for the color of her skin, unfolds alongside Rosebud’s battle to survive the devastating flooding in the Lower Ninth Ward and to find help for her unstable mother. These unforgettable characters give voice to the dead of the storm and, in a stunning twist, demonstrate how what we think we know can make us blind to what matters most.

& Tuesday at 6 pm Garden District Book Shop features Roberta Brandes Gratz’s We’re Still Here Ya Bastards: How the People of New Orleans Rebuilt Their City. Watching coverage of the hurricane on television in 2005, noted urbanist and veteran journalist Roberta Brandes Gratz knew that the best chance for the city’s recovery came from the people who would return to New Orleans. She also knew that she wanted to see for herself how the city would respond. Two years later, after having made several trips to the area and written several articles, Gratz bought a house in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans and immersed herself in the life of the city. We’re Still Here Ya Bastards presents an unprecedented panoramic look at New Orleans’ recovery in the years following the hurricane. From the Lower Ninth Ward to the storied French Quarter, Gratz shares the stories of people who returned to their homes and have taken the rebuilding of their city into their own hands. An internationally renowned urban critic, Gratz shows how the city is recovering despite erroneous governmental policies that serve private interests rather than the public good. By telling stories that are often ignored by the mainstream media, We’re Still Here Ya Bastards shows the strength and resilience of a community that continues to work to rebuild New Orleans.

& At 7 pm Tuesday the West bank Fiction Writers’ Group meets at The Edith S. Lawson Library in Westwego. Writing exercises or discussions of points of fiction and/or critique sessions of members’ submissions. Meets the second and fourth Tuesday of every month. Moderator: Gary Bourgeois. Held in the meeting Room.

& Also at 6 pm Octavia Books welcomes Louisiana native son Blaine Lourd when he returns to discuss and sign his memoir, BORN ON THE BAYOU.

As the youngest brother and son of a father whom I respected, feared, and idolized, I know well the rights of passage Blaine writes about: We don’t really become men in our fathers eyes UNTIL we buck them and go our own way. Hard, scary and at times unfair, it works. Blaine Lourd tells a personal story that a lot of sons and little brothers know well. A story that a lot of us wouldn’t be where we are today without.” –Matthew McConaughey

& Gary Rivlin will be at Maple Street Book Shop, Wednesday, August 26th, at 6PM to read from his book, Katrina: After the Flood. Ten years after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in southeast Louisiana, journalist Gary Rivlin traces the storm’s immediate damage, the city of New Orleans’s efforts to rebuild itself, and the storm’s lasting affects not just on the city’s geography and infrastructure-but on the psychic, racial, and social fabric of one of this nation’s great cities. This book traces the stories of New Orleanians of all stripes-politicians and business owners, teachers and bus drivers, poor and wealthy, black and white-as they confront the aftermath of one of the great tragedies of our age and reconstruct, change, and in some cases abandon a city that’s the soul of this nation.

& Also at 6 pm Wednesday Octavia Books hosts acclaimed YA novelist Libba Bray is coming to NOLA to celebrate the release of LAIR OF DREAMS, the follow-up to THE DIVINERS.vAfter a supernatural showdown with a serial killer, Evie O’Neill has outed herself as a Diviner. Now that the world knows of her ability to “read” objects, and therefore, read the past, she has become a media darling, earning the title, “America’s Sweetheart Seer.” But not everyone is so accepting of the Diviners’ abilities. Meanwhile, mysterious deaths have been turning up in the city, victims of an unknown sleeping sickness. Can the Diviners descend into the dream world and catch a killer?

& At 7 pm it’s Big Easy Author Night featuring Tom Piazza at the Keller Library & Community Center. Piazza is celebrated both as a novelist and as a music journalist. His twelve books include the novels A Free State, City of Refuge, the post-Katrina manifesto Why New Orleans Matters, and Devil Sent the Rain, a collection of his essays and journalism. He was a principal writer for the innovated HBO drama series Treme, and the winner of a Grammy Award for his album notes to Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues: A Musical Journey.

& At the East Jefferson Regional Library it’s also an Author Event featuring Conversations with My Daughter About Human Trafficking. Stephanie Hepburn, a local author and attorney, will discuss her new book for children titled Conversations with My Daughter About Human Trafficking. The event is free of charge and is open to the public. Books will be available for sale for those who would like to purchase them. Hepburn’s book focuses on the question – How does one get into a conversation with children about how individuals are tricked, extorted and enslaved without exposing them to ideas that may be too mature for them, such as sexual exploitation, rape and the murder of their loved ones?

Beginning Wednesday at 7 pm and running through Friday The Telling: Photo exhibit by Andy Levin, A reading + new work by Chris Rose, and Sounds provided by The Piano Warehouse. Independent curator Pamala Bishop brings together internationally renowned photographer ANDY LEVIN with Pulitzer Prize winning author CHRIS ROSE for THE TELLING, a multi-sensory experience of Katrina explored through visual art, music and written word. By Admission.

& Wednesday night from 8-9 pm, come drink some coffee and make your voice heard at the Neutral Ground Poetry Hour, 5110 Danneel Street.

& Thursday at 6 pm Garden District Book Shop features John Biguenet’s Rising Water Trilogy: Plays. Widely praised by critics and hailed by audiences, the award-winning plays in John Biguenet’s The Rising Water Trilogy examine the emotional toll of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Approaching the storm, the levee collapse, and subsequent socioeconomic catastrophe through the lives of three couples and their families, Biguenet conveys insights into the universal nature of trauma and feelings of loss with heart-wrenching intimacy and palliative humor. Each play–Rising Water, Shotgun, and Mold–incorporates the structure of a house as it examines the anatomy of love, moving from the hours just after the levees’ collapse to four months into the flood’s chaotic aftermath–and then to a year later when a family returns to their now mold-encrusted home. In aggregate, these plays employ the seemingly simple act of living together to examine questions of what home truly means. Biguenet also delves into the consequences of living in a city wracked by catastrophe and long-simmering racial tensions, yet so beloved by its inhabitants that even decades of federal neglect and municipal mismanagement cannot erase their emotional attachment to the place and to each other.

& Thursday at 6 pm Octavia Books features a presentation and signing with anthropologist Katherine E. Browne featuring her new book, STANDING IN THE NEED: Culture, Comfort, and Coming Home After Katrina. The book presents an intimate account of an extended Lower St. Bernard Parish African-American family’s ordeal after Hurricane Katrina. Before the storm struck, this family of 300 members lived in the bayou communities of St. Bernard Parish just outside New Orleans. Rooted there like the wild red iris of the coastal wetlands, the family had gathered for generations to cook and share homemade seafood meals, savor conversation, and refresh their interconnected lives In this lively narrative, Katherine Browne weaves together voices and experiences from eight years of post-Katrina research. Her story documents the heartbreaking struggles to remake life after everyone in the family faced ruin. Cast against a recovery landscape managed by outsiders, the efforts of family members to help themselves could get no traction; outsiders undermined any sense of their control over the process. In the end, the insights of the story offer hope. Written for a broad audience and supported by an array of photographs and graphics,

& At the East Bank Regional Library of Jefferson Parish the SciFi, Fantasy and Horror Writer’s Group meets at 7 pm. The purpose of the group is to encourage local writers to create works of fiction based on science fiction, fantasy and horror themes. Participants submit manuscripts to be critiqued by others in the group. Open to all levels. Free of charge and open to the public. No registration

& This and every Thursdays call the New Orleans Poetry Brothel and they will read you a poem 8pm-Midnight CST. 504-264-1336.

& Saturday at 11:30 am it’s Story Time with Miss Maureen. In remembrance of 10 years past, we’ll read Marvelous Cornelius: Hurricane Katrina and the Spirit of New Orleans by Phil Bildner (Chronicle Books, $16.99). In New Orleans, there lived a man who saw the streets as his calling, and he swept them clean. He danced up one avenue and down another and everyone danced along. The old ladies whistled and whirled. The old men hooted and hollered. The barbers, bead twirlers, and beignet bakers bounded behind that one-man parade. But then came the rising Mississippi and a storm greater than anyone had seen before. In this heartwarming book about a real garbage man, Phil Bildner and John Parra tell the inspiring story of a humble man and the heroic difference he made in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Also, The Two Bobbies by Kirby Larson, Mary Nethery, illustrated by Jean Cassels, which tells the real-life story of animal friendship between a dog and a cat who helped each other survive during and after Katrina.

& At 2 pm Saturday a Poetry Reading: Before, During, and Since, will be hosted by master of poetical ceremonies Gina Ferrara at the Latter Memorial Library. Readers TBA in the daily post (or updated here when I find out).

& At 4 pm Saturday the Spoken Word Weekly Workshop for Teens at the Nix Library. Studying the work of contemporary poets and spoken word artists, teens will focus on imagery, metaphor, narrative, and other important devices as they create their own written work. The workshop is led by Sam Gordon, a spoken word artist and educator based in New Orleans.

& Sunday at 3 pm The Maple Leaf Reading Series features a Katrina Open Mic. The Maple Leaf Reading Series is the oldest continuous reading in the south (making an allowance for Katrina), and was founded by noted and beloved local poet Everette Maddox.

Think Ghouls. It’s Friday. August 21, 2015

Posted by The Typist in cryptical envelopment, Moloch, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
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Arabella’s request for a Friday song. The Speaking Tequila Skull approves.

And roverman’s refrain of the sacrilege recluse
For the loss of a horse
Went the bowels and a tail of a rat
Come again, choose to go

And if epiphany’s terror reduced you to shame
Have your head bobbed and weaved
Choose a side to be on

If this job doesn’t kill me, I will emerge a creature that would horrify Rimbaud, Hunter and Lovecraft. I will utter words of truth so monstrous the unfrozen pole will shift its axis, the clouds will rain fears dissolving the statistically consistent, and all of the money hustlers will be swallowed by the gaping cracks that will grin in the earth hungry for their souls.

No Camels or Burros Were Harmed In The Making Of This Message August 20, 2015

Posted by The Typist in Moloch, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
Tags: Ezra Pound
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Before I settle down to an evening of [NON DISCLOSURE REDACTED]: first, settle in with a big, steaming mug of hot, black WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING THESE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO KILL ME to make you straighten up and fly right, as my good old mother used to say. And to help keep me going, light up a COUGH HACK WHEEZE cigarette made without added chemical ingredients by sage smoke-wreathed, earth-prayer chanting naked Indian maidens WHO ARE IN REALITY A ROBOTIC PRODUCTION LINE IMPORTED FROM CHINA. This message has been brought to you by DEBT IS THE MODERN BASIS OF SLAVERY [Ezra Pound].

This Is Not Funny August 17, 2015

Posted by The Typist in cryptical envelopment, Moloch, music, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street.
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I want to get off.

The hottest record on Radio Free Albemuth goes out to all of the frantically sprinting slaves of Moloch, whose soul is electricity and banks…

radio August 16, 2015

Posted by The Typist in cryptical envelopment, Poetry, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street.
Tags: >Mockingbird Wish Me Luck, Charles Bukowski, radio
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strange eyes in my head

I’m the coward and the fool and the clown and

I listen to a man telling me that I can get a

restaurant guide and an expanding cultural events calendar

I’m just not here today

I don’t want restaurants and expanding cultural events

I want an old shack in the hills

rent free

with enough to eat and drink until I die

strange eyes in my head

strange ways

no chance

Bukowski, Charles (2009-03-17). Mockingbird Wish Me Luck

Consummation Of Grief August 16, 2015

Posted by The Typist in FYYFF, Poetry, The Narrative, The Typist.
Tags: Charles Bukowski
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By Charles Bukowski

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.

Periplumb August 14, 2015

Posted by The Typist in poem, Poetry, The Journey, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street.
Tags: Venice
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Full-moon Venice preriplumb
Vaparetto No 2. S. Marco:
Campari soda at Harry’s Bar (2)
linen slacks, lime sherbet shirt
my best hat (American, called Milano)
new Italian loafers (no socks)
squandering Euros for a moment
of history, of artificial beauty–
better leather, tan-complimenting
French nails, Italian movie glamour.

The anarchists are out
in the dark like rats:
case por tutti
non si ama liberi
Sheila can you dance like Mussolini?
but the grave carabinieri
who shared my boat,
a blocky, Homeric man
with a square beard,
hefty Berretta on his hip,
keeps their paint bombs
away from S. Marco.

Abandon Harry’s mirrors,
women dressed for Venice
but not Venice, tawdry
among the marble.

Vaporetto No. 2. S. Marco,
round out the periplumb.
One woman alone: brown hair,
glasses, simple slacks and blouse,
natural, a primal Italian beauty,
a noble line of face
fit to strike in metal
the color of her skin.

Glances at my age are flattering,
returning them feels unbecoming but
alone in full-moon Venice
is temptation monumental.
By happy accident I take a seat
in the bow across an aisle
wide as the Grand Canal.
No words. No room. No hope.
Her glances continue, presuming
some intent in my choice of seat.
She removes one shoe, stretches red toes
suggesting the continuation
of lithe curves tending toward
a narrow alley in some quiet sestieri
but no. I watch the passing palazzo.
She turns assertively
to look the other way.

My Venice adventure passes by,
Ca’ Desdemona dark in the moonlight.
My periblumb ends as it began
at Ferrovia.

Dinner And A Movie August 12, 2015

Posted by The Typist in The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street.
Tags: patriotism, Yukio Mishima
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Watching Yukio Mishima’s Patriotism, macaroni and cheese with barbecue is not recommended, particularly if you’ve finished your brisket sandwhiches and the run-off sauce has gotten into the mac-and-cheese, even if the hari-kiri scene is in black and white. Movie: Five Stars. Dinner: One Star, and unfinished.

Psephology Presenting As Thalassophobia August 12, 2015

Posted by The Typist in Politics, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street.
Tags: Architeuthis, cephalopods, giant squid, GOP, psephology
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Word of the day:

psephology
\see-FOL-uh-jee\
noun
1. the study of elections.

Psephology, which puts me in mind of cephalopods which brings to mind the GOP candidates. Not the intelligent octopus, but rather the squid (best fried with marinara), in particular the lurking giant squid (genus Architeuthis), the terror of ancient sailors by rumor but which, brought up into the bright light of day, perishes. I am of a mind with the ancient mariners, fear the tentacle at the scupper, the terror of them dragging us down into their depths and oblivion, hope that exposed they will swell up and burst like Chris Christie at a pie eating contest.

Repent Walpurgis August 11, 2015

Posted by The Typist in cryptical envelopment, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street.
Tags: Procol Harum, Repent Walpurgis
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After all the sturm und drang, a light musical interlude…

I’ll Remember It For You, No Charge August 11, 2015

Posted by The Typist in movie, Politics, Reality, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street, We Are Not OK, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, WTF.
Tags: Bobby Kennedy, Radio Free Albemuth, Sen. Bernie Sanders
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It was the reference to Bobby Kennedy that was the gut punch. I won’t know if a Hollywood writer tossed in the line about Ferris F. Fremont buying up all the voting machine companies, or if that’s in Phillip K. Dick’s novel Radio Free Albemuth. It would be easy enough to find out. Get it on Kindle. Search it. It might put my mind at east to know that is was a bit a Hollywood fluffing for an overtly political movie.

I’m afraid if I buy it, I’ll read it.

Bobby Kennedy. I found myself compulsively wondering, as I wandered up to Cansecos for cigarettes to steady my nerves. if Sen. Bernie Sanders will make it to the podium alive. Bobby. Martin Luther King, turning from civil rights to the war and economics, stealing Malcom’s African Nationalist economics of the Ballot or the Bullet speech into equal rights on every level, questioning the foundations of a society that requires a pool of surplus labor of all colors starving in the wings, wars invented to siphon off and thin the surplus while making money for all the right people.

Bang.

Have you ever watched Bulworth? If you do, freeze frame on the assassination scene at the end. (Don’t complain about the spoiler. If you were going to watch the most important political film made in America in the 20th century you’d have gotten around to it by now.) Notice the uncanny resemblance of the central tableau to that on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

Bang.

Perhaps They have evolved beyond that, become more sophisticated. Buying airtime for Rush Limbaugh until he caught on, tapped a vital and ugly vein at the core of America. Fox News. Badgering the real journalists for not being Fair and Balanced until the media corporations took over and enforced their version of Fair and Balanced. Flat earth versus round, equal time for both sides: you decide. They have divided us as bitterly as the Serbs and Croats, something to think about if it all comes apart. Because that ended so well. And the Right has all the guns.

Bang.

So that’s it, I’ve lost it. You’re sure of it. Certain, because you never took a turn to sleep in your office because someone tried to break in, because someone was rifling the trash at night before corner-store shredders were a thing, because of the dark sedan frequently across the street that drove off when you approached it. All because of that Menace to the American Way, U.S. Rep. John Breaux. His voting record is hard to find, but he was as centrist as they come. A founder of the Democratic Leadership Council, which birthed President Bill Clinton and gave that cute young Republican Hillary a leg up into her lap dance for Wall Street. Still, he was a threat. A victory by Breaux in the “first primary” of the old Louisiana election system could have upset the apple cart and tipped the Senate to the Democrats in 1986. This bode ill not just for the last years of Reagan, but was a threat to the entire Southern Strategy of the GOP, built on open race baiting and voter suppression. And he did. We did. We beat the motherfuckers, even if my own views were nothing like Breaux’s. And those things happened: the sedan, the garbage riffling, the attempts to force the door.

Paranoid. If paranoia consists of someone putting a plate of fish in front of you and saying, here’s your chicken, and you call them out, then I’m pretty much stark raving. If paranoia is writing stories questioning the campaign finances of a suburban police chief who publicly pistol whipped a disapproved of boyfriend of his daughter’s b in the parking lot of Oakwood Shopping Center, and having your car broken into and nothing taken, not even several dollars of change in the tray on the console. Nothing but your briefcase. Yep, I’m pretty much talking to the lizard wall paper. That’s me.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that a few chapters of Black Lives Matter have taken to harassing Sanders, because groups like that are never infiltrated by the Red Squad. There are no provocateurs. Red Squads, he says. (Make circle around your ear with you finger here). No, I’m sorry, I meant that bunch of photographers covering the First Gulf War Protest who were standing at a good distance from the rest of the media. The ones in suits. Ever met any photo-journalists? Ever seen one working in a suit?

Paranoid. Ever had your named leaked to the newspaper as part of a list of people who would not be admitted to a George Bush rally? I think the most radical thing I had done in the 20 years before that was write a letter to the editor suggesting if they wanted a Decalogue in the city park behind my office, maybe they should consider the Bill of Rights. Oh, and I volunteered for Howard Dean. Remember him? Raaawwwhhhhh. Yeah, him. Pretty much everyone on the Fargo 42 had done some work for Dean.

So, signed any petitions for Bernie Sanders? Been to any rallies? Really. (Scribbles in notebooks). Anything else? Any intemperate political remarks on Facebook? Hmmmm. (Scribbles).

I have shied away from electoral politics since the Coup of 2000. (Yes, you heard that right. Or don’t you remember that video of the flown-in GOP hill staff Hitler youth trying to break down the doors in Broward Country, bringing the recount to an end.

(Damn, he went and did it. Hitler.} No, I said Hitler Youth. I think I get an exemption for that. If not go back and see if you can find the video on the Internet. It forgets nothing. Unless it is erased.

I haven’t watched a national news program since I returned from Europe. I had avoided cable news in any form for years before that. My ex- kept asking me why I wouldn’t watch MSNBC. I couldn’t. I probably would have had a stroke by now if I did. I joined the Breaux campaign not because I agreed with his politics, but because as a young newspaper reporter I was tired of watching. I wanted to get into the Great Game.

It is not a game, unless your definition of games includes Russian roulette, the poison scene from The Princess Bride and, possibly, Day Glo lawn darts in the dark while on acid.

I try not to click through the latest bits of idiocy by the GOP nominees. I would not have been caught dead watching that debate. This isn’t for shits and giggles. This is real, as real as that black sedan, as real as the leaked list, as real as it gets. And I have a feeling it about to get a lot worse.

Why did they have to mention Bobby Kennedy?

Why, when Sanders is single digits behind the neo-liberal (did I say lap dance?) Secretary Clinton.

Why did I watch that fucking movie?

Do not watch Radio Free Albemuth. Do not watch Bulworth (sorry about the spoiler). Just go on about your lives treating the GOP nominees like they’re from the Flat Earth Society. But do stop and think and debate the tactics of certain chapters of Black Lives Matter as if there wasn’t only once answer.

Oh, and definitely do not watch Network. Especially the assassination scene.

(Bang.)

Sorry, I hope I didn’t spoil that one for you, too.

Odd Words August 9, 2015

Posted by The Typist in Book Stores, book-signing, books, bookstores, Indie Book Shops, literature, Louisiana, New Orleans, novel, Odd Words, Poetry, reading, spoken word, Toulouse Street, Writing.
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This coming week in literary New Orleans:

& Monday at 6 pm Octavia Books hosts a presentation and signing with Ryan Stradal featuring his debut novel KITCHENS OF THE GREAT MIDWEST. When Lars Thorvald’s wife, Cynthia, falls in love with wine and a dashing sommelier he’s left to raise their baby, Eva, on his own. He’s determined to pass on his love of food to his daughter starting with pureed pork shoulder. As Eva grows, she finds her solace and salvation in the flavors of her native Minnesota. From Scandinavian lutefisk to hydroponic chocolate habaneros, each ingredient represents one part of Eva’s journey as she becomes the star chef behind a legendary and secretive pop-up supper club, culminating in an opulent and emotional feast that’s a testament to her spirit and resilience. Each chapter in J. Ryan Stradal’s startlingly original debut tells the story of a single dish and character, at once capturing the zeitgeist of the Midwest, the rise of foodie culture, and delving into the ways food creates community and a sense of identity. By turns quirky, hilarious, and vividly sensory, Kitchens of the Great Midwest is an unexpected mother-daughter story about the bittersweet nature of life its missed opportunities and its joyful surprises. It marks the entry of a brilliant new talent.

& The Latter Memorial Library will be closed all week for termite abatement.

& Tuesday at 7 pm The Edith S. Lawson Library in Westwego hosts the Westbank Fiction Writers’ Group. Writing exercises or discussions of points of fiction and/or critique sessions of members’ submissions. Meets the second and fourth Tuesday of every month. Moderator: Gary Bourgeois. Held in the meeting Room.

& Wednesday night from 8-9 pm, come drink some coffee and make your voice heard at the Neutral Ground Poetry Hour, 5110 Danneel Street.

& Thursday at 7 pm the East Jefferson Regional Library hosts an Author Event! Two Local Authors Talk About Their New Memoir. A Big Easy Childhood, by Guy Lyman – Guy Lyman’s memoir focuses on Ray’s Rollerama, Pontchartrain Beach, McKenzie’s, and Easter bunnies in the window of Scheinuk the Florist. Actor and New Orleans native Bryan Batt called the book “A fun and honestly nostalgic memoir. For lovers of all things New Orleans, this delightfully quick read captures a slice of our culture and a lot that ‘ain’t dere no more’.” Guy Lyman is a writer, entrepreneur and owner of Guy Lyman Fine Art on Magazine Street.

& VeizerVizerWiezerWieser, A Memoir, Eight Stories and a Search from Granite City to Kompolt, is Keith Viezer’s memoir of his father’s Hungarian family and a history of Lincoln Place, the unique ethnic neighborhood in Granite City, Illinois, where they grew up. It also contains an account of the author’s three trips to Kompolt, the village in Hungary where they and many other Hungarian families immigrated to settle in Lincoln Place in the early 1900s. This book also includes eight short stories written and published over the years that connect Viezer’s family and the neighborhood where he was born.

& Also at 7 pm Thursday the East Bank Regional Library hosts the East Jefferson Writer’s Group is a critique group for serious fiction writers of all levels who want to improve their story development skills. This group focuses on discussing story development and writing elements and applying critiquing skills in romance, adventure, mystery, literature (but not genres of SciFi, Fantasy, Horror of the alternate Thursday Sci-FI Writers). Short stories, novels, screenplays, plays, comics are accepted; however, non-fiction, such as poetry, biography, autobiography, essays, or magazine articles is not. Free and open to the public. No registration.

& This and every Thursdays call the New Orleans Poetry Brothel and they will read you a poem 8pm-Midnight CST. 504-264-1336.

& Saturday at 11:30 am at Maple Street Book Shop it’s Story Time with Miss Maureen. This week she’ll read Yak and Gnu by Juliette McIver, illustrated by Cat Chapman. A romp in the river with Yak in his kayak and Gnu in his canoe leads to a safari full of unusual nautical discoveries!

& Also at 11:30 am Maple Street Book Shop will be hosting George Sanchez, the author of the Jeff Chaussier mysteries. He will be signing copies of both titles, Exploration’s End and Lit by Lightning.Jeff Chaussier has left his mediocre career as an actor in the Midwest because of another family problem, this time with his cousin Cal. Back in New Orleans with another mystery to solve, he discovers his old friends are dealing with a thriving drug trade. His search sends him to the university theatre, drug lairs, and Bryna’s patio to see if there is still a flame burning there. Has she healed from her injuries suffered in their first adventure? As he pokes about, learning new secrets about Bryna, he receives a second task from the same “certain mysterious gentlemen” who helped him last time. Jeff’s family and friends offer aid as he tries to discover Bryna’s secrets, help his cousin Cal, and keep those “certain gentlemen” placated. Without detective skills, but with a colorful collection of friends, old and new, Jeff pokes and pries, discovering new corners of New Orleans and plots within plots. EXPLORATION’S END is the second novel in the Jeffrey Chaussier mystery series following LIT BY LIGHTNING.The adventures of Jeff, Bryna, his family and his friends continue in the next Jeff Chaussier New Orleans Mystery, A PLACE UNCHANGED due next Christmas.

& Saturday at 10 am the East Jefferson Regional Library hosts the Meeting of the Southern Louisiana Chapter of the Romance Writers of America. Jim Azevedo, marketing director for Smashwords, will continue his three-part webinar series about self-publishing at 10 a.m. on Saturday, August 15 at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon, Metairie.

& At 1 pm Saturday the Norman Mayer Library hosts T(w)een Weekend Writing Workshop. No matter what kind of writing you do or even if just think you’d like to, join us 2nd Saturdays in the Teen Room to talk about and share (if you want to) your stories, poetry, scripts, or comics.

& Sunday at 2 pm Octavia Books features author Dana Gynther comes for a reading, signing, and discussion featuring THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH, a richly drawn novel about a talented and fearless young woman in the 1920s and 30s in Paris. Based around Lee Miller’s life, the story follows her as she catches the eye of Man Ray; and their story takes off. As with books like The Paris Wife and The American Heiress, THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH is a beautifully crafted portrait of a daring woman of her time.. Though Lee gets her start as an assistant to the well-known photographer Man Ray, it doesn’t take her long to find her own path, and put her career above his own.

& Sunday at 3 pm The Maple Leaf Reading Series features an open mic. Coming up Aug. 23 poets Jimmy Ross and Laura Mattingly read from their work.The Maple Leaf Reading Series is the oldest continuous reading in the south (interrupted only by Katrina), and was founded by noted and beloved local poet Everette Maddox.

Get Over It August 8, 2015

Posted by The Typist in cryptical envelopment, Poetry, The Narrative, The Typist.
Tags: Luis Alberto Urrea, Tiajuana Book od the Dead
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Item A) get over it.
Item B) keep typing.

— Luis Alberto Urrea
“Skunks”
Tijuana Book of the Dead

Beckett August 6, 2015

Posted by The Typist in books, literature, The Journey, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street.
Tags: Samuel Beckett
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How can you stand reading Beckett, she asked. I hate him.

I usually do not stand reading Beckett, as I do not frequently travel by city buses any more. More typically, I sit, although at times I recline, bolstered in the bed. And I do not read Beckett so much as enter into Beckett. I imagine myself in a chair in an empty room, as in a setting for End Game, or somewhere unidentifiable in the dark, as when I wake at an odd hour with my sleep mask on. At such times there is an unsettling silence and stillness, leaving one entirely alone with one’s thoughts which is the most mentally unhealthy thing which a thinking person can do, I mean someone who really thinks, not just worries although worry always enters into it, worries not in the abstract but in the concrete concerns of a thinking, vivid imagination contemplating what slumbers in the dark, the great rendering gears of the world waiting for the sound of a bell to begin to grind and compress us into statistically satisfying compliance or into a reject package, like cast-off metal suitable for export. Or it is day and there is light, grey light while outside the drawn curtains the world rumbles and lurches by, an unbalanced machine always at the edge of the tipping point, lurching and smoking past the gutters of poverty where the hungry search the cast-off packaging of the rich for scraps, along streets the lamps of which are perpetually dimmed by willful ignorance, past crowded sidewalks governed by traffic rules the preeminent of which is eyes should not meet, but may wander the bodies of the opposite sex and appraise them as one does cuts of meet for quality versus expense, between buildings the windows of which have curtains drawn to hide their secrets, or which open into the spacious offices of those who rule over the cubicles, each worker like a bee assigned his place in the comb, beneath a sky laced with contrails of others hurrying on the errands of plutocratic commerce or toward resorts that decorate the coasts of mestizo poverty like colorful tumors.

I read Beckett, I tell her, to escape, to imagine him a madman, and that his material was not the world.

39. El Nopal August 4, 2015

Posted by The Typist in cryptical envelopment, The Journey, The Narrative, The Typist, Toulouse Street.
Tags: Lotería
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39. El Nopal (The Cactus) Al que todos van a ver cuando tiene que comer. To which all go to see when they have to eat.

Interpretations: You know what you have to do to get what you need. OR There is a source of help for you

Aging Children August 2, 2015

Posted by The Typist in cryptical envelopment, je me souviens, Remember, The Journey, The Narrative, The Typist.
Tags: Joni Mitchell, Songs to Aging Children Come
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I don’t know what prompted this memory, perhaps the stillness of Sunday morning, the exhaustion of another 60 hour week working a young man’s job, and most of all an answered email to a friend mostly encountered online who had vanished from e-space.

Are you OK? I wrote.

I had begun to feel old and irrelevant and needed to adjust to that, he replied. It’s coming along. Thanks for thinking of me.

Why this song? That is from the quiet of a Sunday when I have chosen to blow off a promised bit of busy work for Moloch, Patrice still asleep, the blinds not yet opened. Exhaustion as an opening to stillness. A mind not quiet but wandering, back in time to Sunday’s long ago in Washington, D.C. when a folk music show on WAMU-FM I favored opened its Sunday afternoon broadcast with this. Even at 30, I struggled against the responsibilities of Capitol HIll and my intrinsic non-conformity. Saturday night’s were the pleasant irresponsibility of of the BBC Robin Hood series, which opened with a lovely song by Clannad, and then on to pleasantly silly irrelevance of Dr. WHO. (Tom Baker is my doctor, as Sean Connery is the only James Bond).

My obsessive ex- would see all errands done Saturday. Not rain nor hail nor sleet nor snow would keep us from those appointed rounds. Sundays were pleasant nothings, a field of wildflowers in the mind, a little tending of the tiny garden in the back of the equally tiny two story railroad house on Fourth Street North East. I remember carrying my then infant daughter to Hechinger’s garden department one Sunday, and having forgotten her bonnet or hat I had tied my handkerchief around her head. This a gaggle of older ladies found absolutely charming. Such a thoughtful and resourceful father.

Come mid-afternoon, all responsibilities dispensed with, the breakfast dishes done and put away, the Post the only real Responsibility given my position on the Hill. Withthe only exception cigarettes on the stoop, it was the futon couch and the radio, this show and this particular song. On certain Sunday’s it comes to mind, and G’s reply to my email immediately brought it forth.

“Songs to aging children come/Aging children I am one.”

(Close your eyes to the overly busy video and just let the song wash over you, my cohort. As we reach the age where the aches take over, we are only as old as we think we are.)

Odd Words August 2, 2015

This coming week in literary New Orleans:

& Monday at 6 pm Octavia Books hosts New Orleans author Katy Simpson Smith – in conversation with author Laura Lane McNeal, author of DOLLBABY, celebrating the paperback release of THE STORY OF LAND AND SEA: A Novel. Simpson Smith stunned readers everywhere last year with this magnificent debut novel. Now, you can meet her in person when she returns to Octavia Books for the paperback edition. Highly recommend for book groups, or anyone. Drawn to the ocean, ten-year-old Tabitha wanders the marshes of her small coastal village and listens to her father’s stories about his pirate voyages and the mother she never knew. Since the loss of his wife, Helen, John has remained land-bound for their daughter, but when Tab contracts yellow fever, he turns to the sea once more. Desperate to save his daughter, he takes her aboard a sloop bound for Bermuda, hoping the salt air will heal her. in this elegant, evocative, and haunting debut, Katy Simpson Smith captures the singular love between parent and child, the devastation of love lost, and the desperate paths we travel in the name of renewal.

& Wednesday night from 8-9 pm, come drink some coffee and make your voice heard at the Neutral Ground Poetry Hour, 5110 Danneel Street.

& Reading Between the Wines hosts Laura Lane Mcneal, author of DOLLBABY and Greg Herren, author of THE ORION MASK Wednesday inside of the American Can Company from 7:00-8:00 pm. Mcneal grew up in New Orleans. She spent most of her career in advertising, and after Hurricane Katrina she seized the opportunity to fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming a writer. DOLLBABY is her first published novel. Herren is an award winning author of more than 20 novels and 50 short stories. He also works as a freelance editor and has edited 15 anthologies. He currently serves as president of the Southwest Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America and has served on the national board as well. In 2005, he was barred from a planned speaking engagement to the gay-straight alliance at Manchester High School in Virginia due to his erotic writing.

& Also this Wednesday at 6 pm Garden District Book Shop features John R. Batty’s Voices of Angels: Disaster Lessons From Katrina Nurses. Co-authors John R. Batty and Gail Tumulty interviewed dozens of nurses and healthcare workers after Hurricane Katrina and presented their findings at the American Nurses’ Association conference. In those interviews, collected in this volume, the nurses spoke about their experiences caring for patients at New Orleans hospitals and medical centers, including the Veterans Affairs Hospital, Charity Hospital, University Hospital, and Ochsner Medical Center. Batty and Tumulty’s additional lessons and disaster preparedness plans make this book an invaluable resource for healthcare professionals and consumers who need their care and a testament to the character of the men and women who worked under these incredible circumstances.

& Thursday at 7 pm the East Bank Regional Library hosts the SciFi, Fantasy and Horror Writer’s Group. The purpose of the group is to encourage local writers to create works of fiction based on science fiction, fantasy and horror themes. Participants submit manuscripts to be critiqued by others in the group. Open to all levels. Free of charge and open to the public. No registration.

& This and every Thursdays call the New Orleans Poetry Brothel and they will read you a poem 8pm-Midnight CST. 504-264-1336.

& “Ten Years After – Chroniclers of the Storm,” the first-ever Jefferson Parish Library Literary Festival, will occur at 10 a.m. on Saturday, August 8 at the East Bank Regional Library, 4747 W. Napoleon, Metairie. The event is free of charge and is open to the public. Books will be available for those who would like to purchase them. The literary festival not only commemorates the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina but honors and promotes the writers who put their words on paper so the world would know what happened here. The literary festival will feature writers who produced fiction, non-fiction, essays, memoir, children’s and young adult works, as well as artists who produced books of photography and art.

10 a.m. – Keynote Address Susan Larson, host of WWNO Radio’s The Reading Life, and author of Book Lover’s Guide to New Orleans, will discuss books about Hurricane Katrina during the past decade.

11 a.m. – Fiction Writer’s Panel

· Rexanne Becnel, Blink of an Eye and The Thief’s Only Child

· Laura Roach Dragon, Hurricane Boy

· Tony Dunbar, Tubby Meets Katrina and Night Watchman

· Patty Friedmann, A Little Bit Ruined; Taken Away; and Do Not Open for 50 Years

· Juyanne James, The Persimmon Trail

· Moderator: Julie Smith, New Orleans Mourning

12:30 – Interview with Chris Rose, 1 Dead in Attic

· Interviewer: Stephen Rea, Finn McCool’s Football Club: The Birth, Death and Resurrection of a Pub Soccer Team in the City of the Dead

2 p.m. – Panel discussion – Art and Photography Books

· Brad Benischek, Revacuation

· David Spielman, Katrinaville Chronicles and Katrina Decade Images of an Altered City

· Charlie Varley, Katrina 366

· Moderator: Anne Gisleson,

3:30 p.m. – Nonfiction Writer’s Panel

· John Batty, RN, Voices of Angels

· Richard Deichmann, MD, Code Blue: A Katrina Physician’s Memoir

· Carolyn Perry, For Better, For Worse Patient in the Maelstrom

· Moderator: James Nolan, PhD, Perpetual Care; Higher Ground and You Don’t Know Me

& Saturday at 11:30 am at Maple Street Book Shop it’s Story Time with Miss Maureen. This week she’ll read Good Morning to Me! A cheerful parrot pushes the limits of early-morning energy in this exuberant picture book from the author-illustrator of “Red Sled” and “Flight School”.

& Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society And Louisiana State Museum To Host Multi-Author Reception Honoring Faulkner Society
Gold Medal Fiction Writers With New Novels Just Released Sunday from 2:30 to 4:30 pm at the Cabildo. The Society will join hands with the Louisiana State Museum to honor Frederick Barton, author In the Wake of the Flagship; Moira Crone, author of The Ice Garden, Jennifer Steil, author of The Ambassador’s Wife, and J. Ryan Stradal, author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest.