On the roughest day of my life... I write this for hope...
Today…
It is a day of remembrance. It is a day where lover’s lost hope. Where fathers lost wives. Grandparents lost homes. Children lost mothers. This marks an awful day in our American history that to this day is still swept under the rug.
New Orleans.
She’s the bastard child. The pagan goddess. The get-a-way plan. The dastardly vacation. It’s the marker of the soul of which really represents everything of the American spirit. Where just miles in any direction can take you to the ocean, the river, the swamp, the gravel roads, the soybean fields, and the farms… You name it. They can kill it, grill it and you will eat it smiling. It’s a city built on hoodoo legends, delta blues deaths, haunted houses full of displaced spirits, swilling spirits, loving rogues, lusty pirates, crafty traders, jazz band death marching parades, broken on the backs of the unfortunate, whispered in the empty halls of the houses of the rising sun, the bedspring kiss of a humid affair of the heart.
They have their own language. Their own music. Their own spirit. Their own heart. They believe you have not lived until you’ve had your heart broken. Until you’ve sang your song, loud and proud, even if it’s out of key. And you are forgiven of even the most heinous of acts, as long as it was done in the name of “love.”
This is the city that now our country has decided to forget. Its “15 minutes” has passed.
There are people still dying from diseases brought on by polluted water and air. People living in housing that do not have running water or electricity. People who have roots to this town going back since the land was originally settled. And every single one of them is being let down… forgotten… This town REFUSES to give up even though our country has given up on them.
I have even heard people remark to me, not realizing that I’m a PROUD Cajun/Creole woman, “Come on, they live in a Hurricane Zone…” My response. Name ONE place. ONE place that is free from natural disaster. Free from earthquake, tornado, tsunami, violent storms, flood or sinkhole. You find me that perfect place; I will buy land now.
I have cut bean poles, plowed farm fields, tended the graves in the family cemetery, drank moonshine, skinny dipped in the creeks, hunted and fished down the Red River, ran barefoot through the green green grass of the family homes scented with gardenias and magnolias alike listening to the vines creep their way up around the house like a protective force against any and all bad dreams. What scares me most? Those memories are just that memories to people who’ve lived their whole lives to a place that they are still being denied.
I hear “dumb rednecks” “hicks” “hillbillies” “poor farmers.” It breaks my heart that so many people are truly uneducated on our country. These people supply the foundation for our countries musical roots. Influence our arts. These are people who help protect endangered wildlife and precious wetlands. These are farmers who supply good chunks of our countries soybean and rice growth. Louisiana is more than Mardi Gras. It’s more than some “idiot” character from “The Waterboy” living in a bayou moving along on a pirogue catching gators, frogs and opossums to eat. These people are just as important to our country as those who perished tragically and painfully in the World Trade Center. The only difference is the people in Louisiana who died, those people died by our own country’s hands. We, as a country, failed THEM and we are continuing to do so. This is more than just even New Orleans, think about what Rita even did to my beloved beaches of Cameron.
I grew up in Tampa, FL. I lived during 100’s of hurricanes and floods in the lightning capitol of the US. I lived for a couple years in Louisiana. In hot humid hurricane weather, and icy miserable freezing brown rain. My family are Paul’s, Doyle’s, Willette/Ouilette/Willett’s all alike. And I don’t even think I even have time to break down into the smaller branches. I just know that we cannot sit and let a city just… die. Not even from just loss of blood, but in the putrid stench as the limb rots away because we failed as a nation to help people.
There are many places, people, organizations that are helping. You are not too late to contribute. To be a part of a solution. Not the ignorant blind eye refusing to acknowledge the STILL ongoing problem.
So many people were displaced, mentally, as well as physically. There are so many of New Orleans’ children who are forever gone and will never make it back into her arms.
So here are some interesting ways you can help out:
Habitat for Humanity - New Orleans
http://www.habitat-nola.org/
Musicians Village
http://www.nolamusiciansvillage.org/
New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund
http://www.myspace.com/nomrf
http://nomrf.org
Black Victory Clothing (donates money for every clothing purchase to Habitat for Humanity and Musicians Village for those who are broke and need bitching clothes, but yet want to contribute)
http://www.myspace.com/blackvictory
http://blackvictory.com
These are the memories that I pull close around me when I tuck myself in late at night under my mother’s handmade quilt. The quilt that my Great Aunt Bertie taught her how to sew. My Great Aunt Bertie who plowed her farm with a steel plow and a donkey that I cut bean poles with. My Great Granny Lena who had the treasure trove of hidden goodies in her closet. My PaPa TJ who would sit on his back porch with his mandolin and sing beautiful Cajun music to his grandchildren. My cousins playing touch football and trying to help us sneak off chocolate cake from the dessert table during the family reunions which started at the family house with watermelon and devilled eggs and ended with us all in the droves walking the mile down the gravel road to go and tend our ancestors’ graves in the family cemetery. The story telling. The folk lore. The legends. The blood, sweat, tears… The heart, soul and backs broken in the effort to help create Louisiana.
This is MY family. Let me put MY face on it so that it may hit home.
(me busting out my LSU shirt)
(mom giving the saints some love)
It is a day of remembrance. It is a day where lover’s lost hope. Where fathers lost wives. Grandparents lost homes. Children lost mothers. This marks an awful day in our American history that to this day is still swept under the rug.
New Orleans.
She’s the bastard child. The pagan goddess. The get-a-way plan. The dastardly vacation. It’s the marker of the soul of which really represents everything of the American spirit. Where just miles in any direction can take you to the ocean, the river, the swamp, the gravel roads, the soybean fields, and the farms… You name it. They can kill it, grill it and you will eat it smiling. It’s a city built on hoodoo legends, delta blues deaths, haunted houses full of displaced spirits, swilling spirits, loving rogues, lusty pirates, crafty traders, jazz band death marching parades, broken on the backs of the unfortunate, whispered in the empty halls of the houses of the rising sun, the bedspring kiss of a humid affair of the heart.
They have their own language. Their own music. Their own spirit. Their own heart. They believe you have not lived until you’ve had your heart broken. Until you’ve sang your song, loud and proud, even if it’s out of key. And you are forgiven of even the most heinous of acts, as long as it was done in the name of “love.”
This is the city that now our country has decided to forget. Its “15 minutes” has passed.
There are people still dying from diseases brought on by polluted water and air. People living in housing that do not have running water or electricity. People who have roots to this town going back since the land was originally settled. And every single one of them is being let down… forgotten… This town REFUSES to give up even though our country has given up on them.
I have even heard people remark to me, not realizing that I’m a PROUD Cajun/Creole woman, “Come on, they live in a Hurricane Zone…” My response. Name ONE place. ONE place that is free from natural disaster. Free from earthquake, tornado, tsunami, violent storms, flood or sinkhole. You find me that perfect place; I will buy land now.
I have cut bean poles, plowed farm fields, tended the graves in the family cemetery, drank moonshine, skinny dipped in the creeks, hunted and fished down the Red River, ran barefoot through the green green grass of the family homes scented with gardenias and magnolias alike listening to the vines creep their way up around the house like a protective force against any and all bad dreams. What scares me most? Those memories are just that memories to people who’ve lived their whole lives to a place that they are still being denied.
I hear “dumb rednecks” “hicks” “hillbillies” “poor farmers.” It breaks my heart that so many people are truly uneducated on our country. These people supply the foundation for our countries musical roots. Influence our arts. These are people who help protect endangered wildlife and precious wetlands. These are farmers who supply good chunks of our countries soybean and rice growth. Louisiana is more than Mardi Gras. It’s more than some “idiot” character from “The Waterboy” living in a bayou moving along on a pirogue catching gators, frogs and opossums to eat. These people are just as important to our country as those who perished tragically and painfully in the World Trade Center. The only difference is the people in Louisiana who died, those people died by our own country’s hands. We, as a country, failed THEM and we are continuing to do so. This is more than just even New Orleans, think about what Rita even did to my beloved beaches of Cameron.
I grew up in Tampa, FL. I lived during 100’s of hurricanes and floods in the lightning capitol of the US. I lived for a couple years in Louisiana. In hot humid hurricane weather, and icy miserable freezing brown rain. My family are Paul’s, Doyle’s, Willette/Ouilette/Willett’s all alike. And I don’t even think I even have time to break down into the smaller branches. I just know that we cannot sit and let a city just… die. Not even from just loss of blood, but in the putrid stench as the limb rots away because we failed as a nation to help people.
There are many places, people, organizations that are helping. You are not too late to contribute. To be a part of a solution. Not the ignorant blind eye refusing to acknowledge the STILL ongoing problem.
So many people were displaced, mentally, as well as physically. There are so many of New Orleans’ children who are forever gone and will never make it back into her arms.
So here are some interesting ways you can help out:
Habitat for Humanity - New Orleans
http://www.habitat-nola.org/
Musicians Village
http://www.nolamusiciansvillage.org/
New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund
http://www.myspace.com/nomrf
http://nomrf.org
Black Victory Clothing (donates money for every clothing purchase to Habitat for Humanity and Musicians Village for those who are broke and need bitching clothes, but yet want to contribute)
http://www.myspace.com/blackvictory
http://blackvictory.com
These are the memories that I pull close around me when I tuck myself in late at night under my mother’s handmade quilt. The quilt that my Great Aunt Bertie taught her how to sew. My Great Aunt Bertie who plowed her farm with a steel plow and a donkey that I cut bean poles with. My Great Granny Lena who had the treasure trove of hidden goodies in her closet. My PaPa TJ who would sit on his back porch with his mandolin and sing beautiful Cajun music to his grandchildren. My cousins playing touch football and trying to help us sneak off chocolate cake from the dessert table during the family reunions which started at the family house with watermelon and devilled eggs and ended with us all in the droves walking the mile down the gravel road to go and tend our ancestors’ graves in the family cemetery. The story telling. The folk lore. The legends. The blood, sweat, tears… The heart, soul and backs broken in the effort to help create Louisiana.
This is MY family. Let me put MY face on it so that it may hit home.
(me busting out my LSU shirt)
(mom giving the saints some love)