I Know You Rider April 10, 2008
Posted by The Typist in cryptical envelopment, Dancing Bear, Toulouse Street.Tags: 504, Ashley Morris, celebration, funeral, Grateful Dead, I Know You Rider, je me souviens, New Orleans, NOLA, Remember, We Are Not OK
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Jesus the Jew jumped up in his pew and sang a simple song:
I Know Your Rider and then for an encore You Just Keep Me Hangin’ On
–Some Drunken Idiot
I’m tired about writing about the Other, about all of It, this crazy After the End of This World we live in. This is for me. It is my invocation for tomorrow morning, to carry me through the day. It is for all of you, my blessing on a sad day; but most of all for myself:
“I wish I was a headlight/On a north bound train.
I’d shine my light/Through the cool Colorado rain.”
Remember Ashley Morris April 6, 2008
Posted by The Typist in 504, Dancing Bear, New Orleans, Sinn Fein, Toulouse Street, We Are Not OK.Tags: 504, Ashley Morris, Bloggers, funeral, New Orleans, NOLA
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Loki of Humid City has put together a web memorial page for Ashley Morris with a direct link to the Pay Pal account to help out Hana and the kids.
Funeral arrangements are set. Visitation will be 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and the service will be at 1 p.m. this Friday, April 11 at Schoen Funeral home on 3827 Canal Street, with internment at St. Louis #3 cemetery, 3421 Esplanade Avenue, to follow.
Please visit www.RememberAshleyMorris.com and give generously to help his family (he leaves three pre-school children behind). There’s a Pay Pal account so it couldn’t be easier. There’s a direct link to the Pay Pal at right under Ashley’s picture.
Loki and others are also working on a benefit for Ashley’s family;details to follow.
Thanks not only to the NOLA Bloggers who’ve done so much for Ashley (not the least of which are their memorials on-line), but also to Gambit Weekly writers for the memorials at their blog by Micheal Tisserand and this anonymous one.
Tisserand nailed Ashley to the page with this:
“Ashley Morris was emblematic of the new wave of post-Katrina bloggers in New Orleans: fiercely local and quick to take to the guard tower against those who might malign or even misunderstand his beloved home. He was more volatile — and more entertaining — than most writers who cover the city in any media. He lived on the rough draft, which made him invaluable during rough times.”
Down by the riverside February 6, 2008
Posted by The Typist in Carnival, cryptical envelopment, Dancing Bear, French Quarter, Mardi Gras, New Orleans, NOLA, Odds&Sods, parade, Rebirth.Tags: Carnival, funeral, Krewe of Colleen, Krewe of Kosmik Debris, Krewe of St. Anne, Mardi Gras, memorial, memory, Mississippi River, Moon Walk, mourning, New Orleans, NOLA, parade, Queen Colleen
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This year on Mardi Gras, with my family all home sick I took off all on my own oddy-knocky and made a point of trying to catch all of the marching krewes I could and taking a lot of pictures, starting with waiting for the Krewe of St. Anne’s on Royal Street in the Marigny and ending with finding St. Anne’s as they marched down to the riverside. I managed to track down the Ducks of Dixieland and Kosmik Debris, but never saw Pete Fountain (largely because I stayed in Marigny until after 11 waiting for St. Anne’s). I also found the Krewe of Whoo Hooo, Mondo Kayo dancing on Frenchman, and a few other odd groups I had not seen before.
Video of Krewe of St. Anne at Royal and Frenchman Streets
As a result, I missed most of the day’s parades, only catching a half dozen perhaps of Zulu as they turned onto Canal Street. The corner of Royal and Canal is not a great place for throws. The floats make a turn there and the barricades are kept far back. The only beads I had for the day were two pair I got from Queen Colleen, mother of old friends who famously parades through the Quarter pushed in a shopping cart by her adoring students and family.
Queen Colleen
My one throw was from Zulu. Not a coconut, but a walnut painted in gold. At the day’s end, when I joined St. Anne’s at the riverside and had taken my fill of pictures, I joined the St. Anne members who were memorializing their dead of the past year by throwing beads or more personal items into the river. I clambered down onto the rocks, and offered the Zulu nut to all of the ghosts of New Orleans and the Federal Flood. Inspired by the story of the Bone Men below, I invited them all to come and walk with me the rest of the day, to come and taste the visions of a day spent walking through Mardi Gras, to see the pictures I had captured not with my camera but with my memory.
St. Anne’s at the river
St. Anne’s mourners
More St. Anne’s mourners
Memo to my friends and family: this is how I want to go. Hire a band, invite everyone I know, and take my ashes and put them in a cart and parade them through the quarter on Mardi Gras Day. Take them to St. Anne’s in the Marigny, and parade down Royal to Zulu and Rex at Canal Street. At mid-afternoon go to the Moonwalk and wait for St. Anne’s, and scatter them there.
or at these independent New Orleans bookstores:
Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans 