40 Things About Moi

I was visiting Hammer over at When Your Only Tool's a Hammer and I decided to swagger jack this fun meme from him:

What I was doing 10 years ago?
-Roaming the streets of NYC
-Getting ready to move to LA
-Working out for two hours a day (running, rowing machine and weight lifting)
-Listening to a lot of Hot 97 (Busta Rhymes had some hot stuff out then!)
-Going dancing at the Latin Quarter

Five things on my to-do list today?
· Write an article for Divine Caroline
· Revise an article for Anti-Racist Parent
· Go to a school site meeting at 8 a.m. (totally dreading it)
· Go get a chai from Starbucks to help me survive the meeting (I might spike it with some melatonin so I'll be nice and mellow)
· Do this workout (eek!)

Places I have traveled?
· Beijing
· Montreal (not in the winter, m'kay!)
· Catalina Island
· Birmingham
· New Orleans

Five snacks or treats I enjoy?
· Yogurt-covered pretzels
· Twizzlers
· Gummi Worms and Gummi Bears
· Wheat crackers with pickle relish or peach pineapple salsa
· Breyer's triple chocolate ice cream (especially the white chocolate section)

Things I would do if I were a billionaire?
· Start a college prep tutoring non-profit for low-income middle and high school kids
· Buy a place in Villefranche-sur-Mer
· Go live in Villefranche-sur-Mer after I take a trip around the world
· Pay off the bills of everyone in my immediate family and create investment funds for them
· Give money to lots and lots of charities

Five of my bad habits?
-Throwing clothes on floor of my closet
-Procrastination
-Not taking care of myself as much as I should
-Too much multi-tasking
-Inability to spend money on myself

Five places I have lived?
-LA
-New York City
-Guangzhou, People's Republic of China
-Montreal
-Chicago

Five jobs I’ve had?
· Teacher
· Teacher supervisor
· Bank teller (I thought I'd get robbed every day)
· Research Assistant
· Waitress/Restaurant Hostess

Gosh that was fun! Now you know I want to tag some of y'all but I'll refrain. But, if you do this meme, let me know!

Porches

Sitting on the porch is an art that's mostly been lost in Los Angeles. I don't know about your city, but in LA, I rarely see a neighborhood busybody out on her porch, surveying the going-ons of everyone and their mother.
In the past two days in New Orleans, I've fallen in love with the way folks sit out on their porches. Porch size doesn't really matter. It only needs to be big enough for one, maybe two chairs.

I imagine that once upon a time, in an existence not so long ago, some old lady sat on this particular porch in New Orleans' Ninth Ward. She probably admired the wrought iron on her porch railing and gazed up at the proud stature of the old oak trees that once stood everywhere. She probably spoke to her neighbors and inquired about what was going on in their lives. She might have read her Bible on that porch. I'm sure she contemplated all the dreams, desires and disappointments she'd had in her youth. I'd like to think she never got to a place where she accepted that the way things were was the way it would always be.

How could our old lady have known that the levees, merely that concrete wall in the background, would be breached and her home would be destroyed? No fortune teller could have told her that the site of countless conversations and events in life would be reduced to mere remnants. What was once her home, her neighborhood, her heart, is now uninhabitable, a ghost town of epic proportions.

Imagine what you would do if your neighborhood was vibrant and thriving, bustling with both happiness and heartache, and then became this...

I'd like to think that the strength and spirit of the people who once lived in the Ninth Ward lingers even though they're gone.

It makes me wonder, how would I react in the face of such devastation, such adversity? Could I respond with such courage? Could you?

It's Not Good Enough To Just Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler

It's three in the morning and I'm still trying to sort out everything I've experienced during my first day in New Orleans.

I'll confess that whenever I come to the South, I'm very conscious of the fact that slaves once stood on the same ground I happen to be walking on. I got off the plane and was immediately confronted with "Tour a Plantation!" advertisements. I wondered, do they show it all? Do they show the fields and the slave quarters? Do they show whipping posts and slave cemeteries? Do they explicitly discuss slavery on these tours? (I've heard they don't) or is it just a ride through the glory days of the Old South, when everything was much simpler and Negroes knew their place? And is there a moment of silence where we honor the memories of the countless souls that suffered unspeakable horrors?

For me, I see the word "plantation" and I think of whips and chains and scenes that were first visualized for me while watching the mini-series Roots. I think of blood flowing down scarred backs. I think of those backs broken from bending over in cotton fields and hands raw with the pain of picking.

Other people are not thinking of these things. They're thinking of sipping mint juleps on a spacious porch.

And, I wonder, who exactly buys these postcards? I found them in a store a couple of blocks away from my hotel. I don't think black people are the ones trying to hold on to precious memories of "Mammy". To the chagrin of the sales clerk, I snapped photos of Mammy-Ann and her gens de coulers. While I'm marinating on this image, let me go ahead and thank God right now that I still have an aversion to Aunt Jemima pancake mix, Mrs. Butterworth's syrup and Uncle Ben's rice, if only because of the resemblance to images like these.

A walk down Bourbon Street feels a little bit like, bar-bar-strip club-souvenir shop, repeated a dozen times. It feels like a fantasy land for the seven deadly sins. The smell of stale vomit laces the air and absolutely nothing feels forbidden. Oh, and let's not forget the black children out tap-dancing with the crowds of white folks standing around watching. I'm terrible, I know, but I think they're thinking, "Just look at those pickaninnies move!"

Yes, what I saw last night... it's like being Luke Skywalker and going over to the "dark side".

The most puzzling thing for me was that other than cooks in the kitchen and these kids, where are the black people? You know, the ones that probably let Harry Connick Jr. play horsey on their backs and taught him about jazz? Um, I'm in New Orleans and I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb. I feel like I see more black folks at home in Los Angeles.

But, not all the black people are gone. All the craziness I saw on a Sunday night on Bourbon Street, and the only person I saw getting arrested was this brotha right here.

I wish I would have snapped photos of all the middle-aged married men getting their freak on while dressed in their Dockers flat-front khakis and polo shirts. I'm sure their wives would love to see images of their "faithful" spouses walking into the strip clubs, wedding rings glinting faintly in the dimness.

If I just stayed here on the edge of the French Quarter, I might start to think that nothing's wrong in this city, that it's back to it's normal self. After all, look at all the people throwing beads off the balconies and letting the good times roll.

Sure, it's fun to do the electric slide in the middle of the street. Yes, I had a great time wearing a cat-mask without anyone batting an eye. But, it's not good enough. It can't stop there. If all the revelers venture beyond hedonism-central, what does the rest of New Orleans look like? And do these people happily tossing beads care or even want to know?

One of my colleagues, James, taught here and yesterday he went to the neighborhood where his school is. Or was. He said it's a ghost town. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get to see some of that for myself.