Maitri has a Blog up concerning the new HBO series “Treme”. I am definitely going to watch it. You should too because it tells much of the truth about what happen to New Orleans post-Flood.
John Goodman is a great representation of our Late Great Ashley Morris, a Blogger for the city back then. I think he will pull this one off.
We are getting screwed over and over. Hundreds of millions of dollars over 40 years and our floodwalls collapse flooding 80% of the city. Four years down the line, and many hundreds of millions more, the Corpse of Engineers says that they will have to close the gates on the London Ave Canal at 2.5 feet?
I thought these assholes spent those millions of $$$ to make the floodwalls stronger. I believed that these people gave a shit about us. I thought that they cared…
Obviously not.
Well, we are at 9+ foot and worst-case scenario is 8.5 foot for flooding. We have a back-up generator and soon solar, to keep us going. We have enough food for 2 months and we can purify water, but what about the others that couldn’t pull off what we did?
They are fucked, plain and simple.
They repaired their flooded slab-on-grade houses trusting in the Corpse, but to no avail. Many of us warned them, but they wouldn’t listen. Now it’s time to see the possibilities of the Future.
The Federal and State Guv;mits don;t care about US. The Port and the oil yes, but not about us who live in this wonderful city. (well they do love the brothels…)
I’m going back in time to Ashley Morris- we must secede from the Gret Stet and take our royalties from the gas/oil industries and then hire the Dutch to save us. Middle America does not care about us. Our ancestors were sold along with the land two centuries ago, and our way of living is abhorrent to thier supposed minds.
We are New Orleanians and this country must pay reparations for the damages to our homeland and our people.
Sinn Fein!
and don’t let the time-vault door hit ya’s on the ass. Now git!
Good old ’08 has been one major struggle after another in the lives of Betts and me. Started the year screaming for our contractors to get the repairs done and screaming at Road Home concerning our Elevation grant. Didn’t help that my body was slowly coming up with more problems that I really didn’t have time nor energy for. These things would wind up coloring my whole year.
In February our beloved Siamese, Opal, passed away peacefully in her sleep lying between us. She actually rolled on her back as Betts rubbed her and then did the same for me. She left five minutes later. I was a mess, but the memory of adopting her when she was 10 and giving her a good life, and some adventures, for the next 11 years did cheer me up a little. (Giving Betty a large heart-shaped box of dark chocolates for Valentines perked her up a little)
Missed all of Mardi Gras last year. I was starting to get some very strange feelings in the old body but kept pushing on (behind Betts) in order to finally get our grant and get the lousy contractors to do their J.O.B. . This latter poop would color the rest of the year.
In early April NOLA Blogger great and a friend, Ashley Morris died suddenly. To say that we local Bloggers took this hard would suffice if spread very thinly. Some set up a fund for his family and together they helped to have a good funeral and give Ashmo a good Second Line to see him along his way. He would have loved the Wake we held later at Bulldogs.
May was much the same with the contractors and my physical probs. Same goes for June except for showing up for Pride in a driving rain. July was a wash.
In August we worked on getting our final Elevation grant only to keep hearing the program might start up in the Fall. We finally got our Occupancy Cert. Rising Tide III was going down at the end of the month, but between packing the dumpster we lived in, getting the power on and my illness, we missed the entire thing. We moved into our home 3 years and 1 day from the day we evacuated due to Katrina.
The next day Gustav hit. I stayed online all night and then lost power the next morning as Baton Rouge was getting the storm. Our home stood like a rock, but the next five days is was hotter than Hell without power to cool the place down. We took most of our 3 freezers of food and either cooked or brought it raw to the Starlight since they were feeding all and sundry. From then until early November Betts and I crashed and burned as so much of the pain, sorrow and strees of the last 3 years somewhat flowed out of us.
November was eventful in that the damn elections were over and Obama won the Presidency and the Dems took strong control of Congress. Later in the month we cooked up a T-Day dinner for 12 to 14 only to have one person show up. I was really getting ill so I decided to bite the bullet and make an appointment with the only Doc I have left at the V.A.. I planned to not have to be in a hospital for the Holidays, but what would be would be.
December found me fretting over the medical stuffs and doing what I did most of the last year- fall into the bed at any time and just sleep. My ‘puter died for a while there and Betts got me a new one. Then she got the call that the mitigation grant folks wanted our paperwork a month earlier than previously. Betts ran it down and later they said we would be getting it, put probably in January.
My visit with the Doc went well. Tests to do, meds to help with the sinitus/tinnitus/ loss of balance and dizziness and an appointment for next month to set up various scans to find out what is happening inside of me. At least he said a brain tumor was pretty far out of the equation. *rolls eyes*
Christmas Week we had an old friend down We hadn’t seen each other for over 5 years. She had only seen pics of the house from when we bought it. We did things during the week- Eve dinner at La Cote Brasserie, quiet Day dinner at home and visited with our friends. It was nice having her visit. Was just like old times.
So tomorrow is New Year’s Eve and we shall do Rueban PoBoys, drink and then watch the Time-Vault door smack old Mr. 2008 in the tush as the Fleur De Lis falls. (And watch “Things To Come”, H.G. Wells) The next morning starts a new cycle and I have a little one named 2009 to become friends with.
Happy New Year Gentle Readers!
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The only folks not attending are Mooks.
Shamelessly copied in it’s entirity:
I cried me a river over Ashley’s death, and here comes a piece concerning the creator of “The Wire” and his dealings with the Great One.
Please donate to the Morris Family Fund.
Last Saturday, a major dissing of our Cultures and Traditions here in New Orleans went down: Da’ NOPD broke up a Second Line, a Jazz Funeral, in the Treme last Saturday. (Of course the local paper didn’t report on the event until the wee hours of the morning today.) This was as the mourners had finished and were walking to a place to share the Repast at a Community Center.
For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of this kind of funerary rite, here’s what it entails:`a procession heads toward the ceremonial place of passing (could be a business, a fishing hole, a certain park or the cemetery.) A brass band leads the folks playing dirges. When the selected place is reached, the words are said and the departed is ready to move on. Then the band strikes up a different beat and the mourners start to dance in order to help their friend move on to the other World. “Dancing them Home” is also a way to stop the tears and just remember our friend as we continue through day-to-day life. We are a Family. We take care of our own.
Once the Second Line is done, the folks gather in places and share food, drink and stories about the departed. Some members of the “Family” might be at one place, others at others. But this is usually how it goes down.
This is a Sacred ritual. It is rooted in Culture and Tradition, Respect and Humanity. This act is seen as essential by many of us as part of our Heritage and our City. Events such as this define us as a people and a Culture, the continuation of what has been for many, many years. As a Native I will say now: “This is part of our Birthright, our being a part of the Life that moves through the heavy damp air as it sways the Spanish Moss on the oak trees. Here is where we came from and in the fullness of time where we shall return. The muddy waters of Old Man River, the clays in the swamps… the scent of cypress trees… all of these things are also part of us. We dance the Dance of Life, knowing full well the fragility of the living, and we will not give our ancestral ways up. This is our home and these are our Traditions. This is OUR Dance.”.
This is why what happened last Saturday is an attack and an affront to the Culture of New Orleans. It is orchestrated by those of money and power. Our city is badly damaged by the Federal Flood, and they want the land for speculation, for those who would buy a condo near the French Quarter in order to “celebrate” three days once every year at Mardi Gras. To break the back of the old Cultures in order to be able to schedule and charge for every little thing we locals do as a matter of course. To make their way our way. These are the desires of malignantly evil creatures.
These are the carpetbaggers, those who swoop down when the we are hurting and gnaw on our bones even as we die. They only see New Orleans as a cash register, not the living entity that it truly is. Our Life, our city’s Life, is something they can never know. The Spirit of Place can never enter them because they cannot “feel”.
New Orleans belongs to Her people and they to Her. Native or adopted, it doesn’t really matter: we are all infected with Her elixier… the “Water of Life”. Our strange little anachronistic bastion of the Old World infused with the desire to just be ourselves in the midst of American Culture gone crazy. The reminder of what could be, if only one accepts it.
One paragraph of the above article caught my eye:
“Snuffing Saturday’s parade was an “attack on the culture,” the same culture that gave birth to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, said Wilson’s longtime friend, Jerome Smith. He found the timing ironic: At about the same time that police had scattered an authentic funeral march, near Esplanade and Claiborne avenues, Jazz and Heritage Festival-goers were lined up behind a band at the Fair Grounds, ready to follow a second-line recreated for tourists.”
Need I say more?
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Perfesser Ashley Morris, a determined lover and defender of New Orleans and Her Culture passed one month ago yesterday. I can almost hear him ranting about this. He did have his Second Line, and he’d be pissed that someone else couldn’t have their’s.
We have established a fund to help his family through this rough period in time. Please donate.
Here’s a link to another memorial to Ashley Morris (who left us way too damn early). The article also includes the memorial from the Big Easy Rollergirls, of whom his wife Hana, aka Soviet Block, is a member.
Though those of us in the NOLA Blogosphere have calmed down a little about learning of Ashley’s death a week ago, there is much activity occurring setting up fundraisers and working on details for his funeral this Friday.
“The Perfesser” leaves a wonderful wife and three young children with our eclectic family here in New Orleans. Please visit “Remember Ashley Morris” in order to help his family out during this trying period in their lives.
Our friend Ashley will be laid to rest on Friday, April 11th.
Details:
Relatives and friends of the family are invited to attend the Funeral Services from Schoen Funeral Home, 3827 Canal St., on Friday, April 11, 2008 at 1 pm. Visitation will be from 10 am until 1 pm. Internment to follow in St. Louis Cemetery #3.
Funeral or Saints attire requested.
Please feel free to donate to the Ashely Morris Fund in order to help his wife and three little ones weather this sad period in their lives.
Tonight we came home and found out that one of the bright lights of New Orleans is gone. Doctor Ashley Morris died yesterday in Florida.
His wit, thought, sarcasm and the ability to do strange, but appropriate, things with expletives boggles the mind. Often I would wake, power up the monitor and bust out laughing over his latest piece. One never knew what was going to appear on those pages.
In person Ashley was a person that could make you feel good about yourself even when you couldn’t see it. He was energy, good pure “juice”. He loved New Orleans and his family. He also had many good friends. The NOLA Blogosphere is somewhat reeling right now: our drummer is gone.
Of all the things I remember about Ashley (not counting the cigars) was the time I referred to the streetcars running here again as “trolleys”. Ashley lost no time in informing me that I had spent too many years living in San Francisco, and that in New Orleans they were “streetcars”. I still giggle when I think of that comment.
Ashley, Great Mime? Rock the Summer Country Darlin’!
Namaste
Update- Adrastos has a few great pics up of the “Perfesser”.
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