"Well, I mean these guys have been taunting us about Katrina the entire time. In my section, somebody asked -- we had somebody ask me 'Oh, did you live down there?' I said 'Yeah, I had 11 feet of water in my house.'
"He said, 'Well, too bad you didn't drown,' and that guy has not been the exception. This has been going on before the game, during the game. I mean, these guys have been violent with our fans. You know, throwin' beers at people . . . ."
Classy fans they got there at Soldier Field, as demonstrated by this picture from The Dead Pelican.
Nope, not even a trivial matter like, uh . . . death can keep some people from being in that number when the Saints have a miracle season. Let's let the New Orleans Times-Picayune's inimitable Chris Rose tell all about it:Wood Brown III was a lifelong Saints fan. The former president of the Louisiana Bar Association was the type of stubborn old codger who would stay in his seats, first at Tulane Stadium, then at the Dome, until the end of every game -- decades of crappy games -- despite the implorings from his two sons: "Please, Dad, can we leave now?"
"No," he would tell them. Something might happen."
We all know a million guys like this. The determined, delusional and unbreakable backbone of this community. Guys who stay in their seats and continue to believe against all odds.
As you well know, that elusive "something" that Wood Brown III -- who lived up to his name with his lifelong penchant for saying "knock on wood!" while rapping his forehead -- waited for all his life never happened over all those years. And now something has finally happened -- something big -- but it's too late for Wood.
Robbed of the ability to attend games several years ago because of Parkinson's disease, he finally succumbed to it this past May.
His body was cremated and his family planned to bury his urn in a plot at St. Joseph's Abbey in Covington last Saturday, Jan. 13, on what would have been Wood's 71st birthday.
"My brother and I had tickets to the game against the Eagles that night," Wood's son, Chuck Brown, told me this week. "I said: Wait a minute! We can't put dad in the ground while the Saints are still alive. He would have loved this!"
Thus, over their mother's halfhearted objection, the family did indeed bury Wood in his urn last weekend, but not before his sons dipped an empty tin from his favorite cigar brand -- Romeo y Julieta -- and scooped up a tube full of their dad's ashes.
"Mom wasn't real happy about this, but she let it happen," Chuck said. "The old man would have absolutely loved what is happening with this team. He waited his whole life for this moment. You can't discount that."
And so Chuck and his brother Clay brought their dad to the game last Saturday night at the Superdome. Wood Brown III was securely tamped into a cigar tube in Chuck's shirt pocket and when times got tense during the game, he and his brother would look at each other and say: "Knock on Wood!"
And that's what they would do, patting Chuck's breast pocket for luck. Other fans seated around them picked up on what was happening and pretty soon an entire section of fans was knocking on Wood and it must have worked because look what happened.
And here we are.
You just never know in what form you are going to encounter an American football fan gone crazy, in the back of a cab in Chicago or in some crazy dude's shirt pocket; the unlikeliest of people in the unlikeliest of places.
Currently, what's left of Wood Brown III is on the mantle at Chuck's mom's house, resting in the cigar tube on top of the playoff ticket stubs. He didn't make the trip to Chicago this week because, quite frankly, Chuck couldn't get the money together.
It costs a lot to do this, to be here. A whole lot. If I had known this story before I left, I would have offered to bring Wood with me because I'm pretty sure he's the kind of guy I would have liked -- although I do wonder how all that would go down at the airport security checkpoint.
Anyway. Too late now.
As for Miami, should that glorious day come, Chuck Brown says he'll see what resources he can manage.
"Maybe we'll hitch up the FEMA trailer and head south," he said. "That's something I could seriously consider. Because I sure would like my dad to see this."
That Green Monster, of course, produces the "Crab Bucket Syndrome."How assiduously does our federal government work to see that this precious raw material is properly developed? In 2006, the Department of Education spent about $84 billion. The only program to improve the education of the gifted got $9.6 million, one-hundredth of 1% of expenditures. In the 2007 budget, President Bush zeroed it out.
(snip)
We live in an age when it is unfashionable to talk about the special responsibility of being gifted, because to do so acknowledges inequality of ability, which is elitist, and inequality of responsibilities, which is also elitist. And so children who know they are smarter than the other kids tend, in a most human reaction, to think of themselves as superior to them. Because giftedness is not to be talked about, no one tells high-IQ children explicitly, forcefully and repeatedly that their intellectual talent is a gift. That they are not superior human beings, but lucky ones. That the gift brings with it obligations to be worthy of it. That among those obligations, the most important and most difficult is to aim not just at academic accomplishment, but at wisdom.
I also wonder how much some version of the Green Monster, the "Crab Bucket Syndrome" -- whatever you want to call it -- might be at play in the long physical deterioration of my alma mater, Baton Rouge Magnet High, into Third World . . . shall we say dishabille? And, brother, talk about speaking euphemistically . . . .
The family of Jennifer Strange -- who died of water intoxication in a Sacramento radio station's "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest -- is suing. I hope they take Entercom's KDND 107.9 FM for every penny the broadcast chain has. "This family has been devastated by a shameful, irresponsible and negligent act of premeditated recklessness," said ROGER DREYER, senior partner of the SACRAMENTO law firm of DREYER, BABICH, BUCCOLA & CALLAHAM. "The station knew this was a dangerous and potentially deadly stunt, but flippantly dismissed the dangers. Now three young children have lost their mother, and their father has lost his wife, because a radio station wanted to boost its ratings and increase its advertising revenue by taking advantage of a young woman who simply wanted to win a prize for her family."
DREYER said the suit should be a "wake-up call" for other stations sponsoring similar stunts. "Outrageousness at any cost has become the industry standard -- the trashier and more humiliating, the better," he said. "It's time to stop this recklessness."
As ALL ACCESS reported yesterday (NET NEWS 1/17) the SACRAMENTO COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT is launching a criminal probe and formal investigation into the death because of the now-dismissed MORNING RAVE's on-air comments, which seem to indicate awareness of the dangers of drinking too much water.
"Hearing the tape, it's very clear they knew of the dangers and could foresee that this could lead to JENNIFER's death," DREYER said. "They knew the health risks of drinking too much water, they knew JENNIFER was feeling ill, and yet they let her leave the station without warning her to call someone for help or seek medical attention. Their brazen disregard for her personal safety is numbing and inexcusable."
Being a Christian in the radio biz is a hard thing to do. Particularly in an industry where the only bottom line is the bottom line, and where part of the job description is "living the lifestyle." And if you think the Christian/radio difficulty stops at the Evil Secular Radio (TM) border, you've got another think comin'.GOD BLESS Derek Webb and Shaun Groves, both for telling it like it is and for having integrity as musicians . . . at the expense of their checkbooks.The choice of a target audience is the result of many factors, and in this particular industry, the typical economic factors are mixed with the ministerial and the evangelical. Becky is certainly a good audience from the perspective of dollars and cents. She is in the car a lot, which means she listens to the radio a lot, which means she hears a lot of commercials. She also has buying power, creating a pleasing combination for advertisers.
Non-commercial stations like her too, because she recognizes the ministry of the station in her family's life and is quick to support it financially. Mainstream data support the choice. For example, during an average week, radio reaches 96.9 percent of women in Atlanta, far exceeding the reach of newspaper and television.
Still, some are dismayed that this singular attention to one demographic limits radio's ability to reach others for Christ.
"The gospel has no target demographic," notes Derek Webb, who has admittedly given up efforts to get his songs played on Christian AC radio. He further suggests that because radio is targeting Becky, songwriters are too. "Anything Jesus is Lord of, our artists should be writing songs about it. We're only covering about 2 percent of it."
Shaun Groves, another artist who has experienced more radio airplay in the past than now, fears the approach of non-commercial stations in fundraising efforts might even be hypocritical. "The bulk of listeners are Christians," he says. "This is music by Christians for Christians, and that's great. It's a valuable ministry. The trouble is, Christian radio tells stories to make you feel they're evangelistic, but they're not. Say what you are. Don't lie to me and tell me I'm saving teenagers."
Another consequence of this target audience is dangerous. "Christian radio is a microcosm of the church, and often reflects the racial segregation that's present in the church," says veteran radio promotions executive Chris Hauser.
Hauser recently helped promote the debut release from Ayiesha Woods, and had that perceived segregation in mind when developing a release strategy. "We circulated the single with no name and no photo, and simply called it the first single from the newest Gotee Records artist."
That song, "Happy," became the most added song on Christian AC radio on April 18. Although it is impossible to measure the impact of the promotion strategy, Woods is the first black female to hit with a non-ballad in recent memory.
Perhaps the most visible effect of Christian radio's choice of a specific target audience is the branding of radio stations.
"The 'Safe for the Family' message had a huge impact when the Salem stations adopted it a few years ago," notes an industry insider who wished to remain anonymous. At its most basic level, stations realized that Becky is often carpooling with the kids, so they made a point to ensure that she understands that nothing she hears on that station will offend her or negatively influence her children.
Salem's trademarked slogan for their Fish stations is "Safe for the Whole Family." K-LOVE calls itself "Positive and Encouraging." Air 1 is "The Positive Alternative," Tulsa's KXOJ is "Your Choice for the Family," while KCMS is Seattle's "Family-Friendly Radio Station."
(snip)
While many listeners applaud the unwavering shelter in what has become a dangerous radio landscape, it is the lyrical content implication that riles some in the industry. Groves has no qualms about stations that are safe for the family, but notes particular dissatisfaction with other branding.
"'Always upbeat and positive,' that's profaning God's name," he says. "Much of the Bible in neither upbeat nor positive. We can never make a station as big as God is, but we shouldn't limit him."Webb is equally outspoken."'Safe for the family' is a terrible and counterproductive slogan. If anything, artists are called to radical truth-telling, which can be very subversive, very dangerous. Artists should challenge what we believe. We can't be safe any more than Jesus was safe."
SACRAMENTO - A Sacramento radio station fired 10 employees Tuesday, including its three morning disc jockeys, after a mother of three died following an on-air water-drinking contest last week at the station's studios.
The hosts of KDND-FM's "Morning Rave" - who go by the on-air names Trish, Maney and Lukas - were fired a day after the station announced it was suspending the show and investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of Jennifer Lea Strange.
Strange, 28, died after participating in a water-drinking contest on the program.
She was one of about 18 contestants who tried to win a Nintendo Wii gaming console early Friday by seeing how much water they could drink without going to the bathroom. The show's DJs called the contest "Hold your Wee for a Wii."
John Geary, vice president and general manager of KDND parent company, Entercom/ Sacramento, made the announcement Tuesday in an e-mail to reporters.
"Effective immediately, the 'Morning Rave' program is canceled and ten employees are no longer with the station."
A company spokesman, Charles Sipkins, confirmed the three DJs, as well as two other on-air personalities, "Carter" and "Fester," were among those fired. Five other employees who worked on the "Morning Rave" also were let go. All 10 were fired, the spokesman said, for violating terms of their employee agreements.
The "Morning Rave" had been on the air for about five years and was one of the capital's top-ranked morning drive programs.
During the contest, participants were given two minutes to drink an 8-ounce bottle of water and then given another bottle to drink after a 10-minute break.
Fellow contestant James Ybarra said he quit drinking after imbibing eight bottles, but Strange, who placed second, and others kept going even after they were handed even larger containers.
In all, according to witness reports, Strange may have drunk nearly two gallons. Afterward, she appeared ill when she went on the air, one contestant said.
Following the contest, Strange called in sick to work. About five hours later she was found dead at her home.
Geary would not say which 10 employees were fired. However, a source at the station told News10 the program director, promotions director and the three morning DJs are among those who have lost their jobs.
"We're going to pull through," a woman who works at the station said. "(The mood) is pretty somber around here. The whole thing is just a tragedy."
Jennifer Strange, 28, was found dead in her Rancho Cordova home Friday. A preliminary coroner's report indicated Strange's death was consistent with a water intoxication death.
Strange had taken part in a contest at 107.9 titled "Hold Your Wee for a Nintendo Wii." The contestants drank bottles of water at 15 minute intervals. The last person to go to the bathroom would win a Nintendo gaming system.
Judy Linder, a nurse practitioner, said she was listening to the contest on her way to work on Friday. "I know how dangerous that is so when I got to work I asked if anybody wanted to be on the radio."
Linder said she and another co-worker called the station on speaker phone and were put on the air.
"She (her co-worker) told them it was dangerous and you could die from water intoxication."
Linder says the disc jockey "pretty much blew that off and said well they've signed a release.
"It wasn't until Sunday that Linder heard Strange had died. "I was totally shocked because they (the disc jockeys) had been warned but they should have known better anyway, they should have checked with someone before they did that, you know."
Linder says she wishes she could have done more to prevent Strange's death. "It's just a terrible, terrible thing. I feel terrible."
Strange's husband, William, did not want to comment about the firings but did say he has set up a fund to help with funeral expenses for his wife.
Donations to The Jennifer Strange Memorial Fund Account 3151089345 can be made at any Washington Mutual branch.
Former federal prosecutor Bill Portanova said Strange's family would likely have a solid case against the station. "On the face of it, the radio station has some serious liability exposure," said Portanova.
Portanova said the February 2005 death of a California State University, Chico student may be the station's undoing.
"Every newspaper outlet and radio outlet reported on it repeatedly where a young man at Chico State University drank himself to death with water so it's clear this radio station had some institutional knowledge that that was a possibility," said Portanova.
Portanova said if a lawsuit is filed, the station will likely settle quickly.
The audio of this -- the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s April 30, 1967 sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church -- is on the previous post, on the YouTube video. This is the uncut, unsanitized, politically incorrect MLK.Let me say finally that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. The home that all too many Americans left was solidly structured idealistically; its pillars were solidly grounded in the insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage. All men are made in the image of God. All men are brothers. All men are created equal. Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Every man has rights that are neither conferred by, nor derived from the State--they are God-given. Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious and healthy place to inhabit. But America's strayed away, and this unnatural excursion has brought only confusion and bewilderment. It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with irrationality.
It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home. Come home, America. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on." I call on Washington today. I call on every man and woman of good will all over America today. I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close. And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, "You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God."
Now it isn't easy to stand up for truth and for justice. Sometimes it means being frustrated. When you tell the truth and take a stand, sometimes it means that you will walk the streets with a burdened heart. Sometimes it means losing a job...means being abused and scorned. It may mean having a seven, eight-year-old child asking a daddy, "Why do you have to go to jail so much?" And I've long since learned that to be a follower to the Jesus Christ means taking up the cross. And my bible tells me that Good Friday comes before Easter. Before the crown we wear, there is the cross that we must bear. Let us bear it--bear it for truth, bear it for justice, and bear it for peace. Let us go out this morning with that determination. And I have not lost faith. I'm not in despair, because I know that there is a moral order. I haven't lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. I can still sing "We Shall Overcome" because Carlyle was right: "No lie can live forever." We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant was right: "Truth pressed to earth will rise again." We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell was right: "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne." Yet, that scaffold sways the future. We shall overcome because the Bible is right: "You shall reap what you sow." With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid because the words of the Lord have spoken it. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when all over the world we will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we're free at last!" With this faith, we'll sing it as we're getting ready to sing it now. Men will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. And nations will not rise up against nations, neither shall they study war anymore. And I don't know about you; I ain't gonna study war no more.
Few will dare air his remarks made at Riverside Church in New York City, where an older, wiser Martin spoke, not of dreams but of realities -- of social, and especially economic injustice -- of rampant American militarism, and yes -- the nightmare of white racism.AND SO I DO, on this commemoration of the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. An excerpt from Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, delivered nearly 40 years ago -- April 4, 1967:
Meanwhile we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.
As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy- and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.
In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counter-revolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken -- the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
TODAY, ON THE 78th ANNIVERSARY of King's birth, some things aren't much different than they were in 1967. Others are.
But, it seems to me, the thing to do when a country discoveres that it has embarked upon a wholly unjustified war of aggression is . . . to stop it. Quit.
When you find you have dug yourself into a hole, CEASE DIGGING. When you figure out that the bunch you've installed to replace Saddam Hussein is as intent upon killing Sunni Muslims as Saddam was upon killing Shiite Muslims, QUIT PROPPING UP THE SOBs.
Lest, of course, you make the original toppling of the old tyrant look even more ridiculous than it already was.
When we have American cities (New Orleans, for one) approaching Baghdad levels of murder, mayhem and malaise, perhaps it is time to ask ourselves why, exactly, we're throwing more cash we don't have onto our present half-trillion-dollar Iraq bonfire. After all, if you're going to spend money you don't have anyway, isn't it a far better thing to spend it trying to do good for one's own citizens?
The hubris of America and her tragically deluded leaders blinds the nation to the flatulent elephant in the family room: We now live in a house of straw and -- as we fight the Muslim hordes half a world away -- just a little huff and a little puff where we least expect it . . . could bring the whole damn thing down upon us.
AND AS GEORGE BUSH pounds our miltary into the desert sand for no good reason, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her new, improved Democrat majority decide one of our most pressing needs is to fully fund cannibalizing the tiniest of human beings in some Dr. Frankenstein quest to fix what ails us.
Has anybody here seen my old friend Martin? Can you tell me whether anybody today -- particularly our U.S. religious leaders -- might be willing to put it all on the line and speak the gospel truth to power?
Particularly when we have so much power so little acquainted with Truth.
(sound of crickets)
Assistant Sacramento County Coroner Ed Smith said a preliminary investigation found evidence "consistent with a water intoxication death."
Jennifer Strange's mother found her daughter's body at her home Friday in the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova after Strange called her supervisor at her job to say she was heading home in terrible pain.
"She said to one of our supervisors that she was on her way home and her head was hurting her real bad," said Laura Rios, one of Strange's co-workers at Radiological Associates of Sacramento. "She was crying and that was the last that anyone had heard from her."
Earlier Friday, Strange took part in a contest at radio station KDND 107.9 in which participants competed to see how much water they could drink without going to the bathroom.
Initially, contestants were handed eight-ounce bottles of water to drink every 15 minutes."
They were small little half-pint bottles, so we thought it was going to be easy," said fellow contestant James Ybarra of Woodland. "They told us if you don't feel like you can do this, don't put your health at risk."
Ybarra said he quit after drinking five bottles. "My bladder couldn't handle it anymore," he added.
After he quit, he said, the remaining contestants, including Strange, were given even bigger bottles to drink."I was talking to her and she was a nice lady," Ybarra said. "She was telling me about her family and her three kids and how she was doing it for kids."
Read this and weep. An op-ed piece by lawyer and writer Billy Sothern from the Dallas Morning News: Last Thursday morning I received a call from my friend Kittee. "I have awful news," she said, and then, very quickly: "Someone broke into Paul and Helen's house. Helen was shot and killed. Paul was holding Baby Francis and was shot three times. He's still alive. Francis is OK." Paul Gailiunas – Dr. Paul, I call him – had been my physician for several years at the Little Doctors Clinic, a health center for poor people that he founded in Treme, one of America's oldest black neighbor-hoods.
I had started to see Paul after my previous doctor mocked one of my colleagues about our work representing people on Louisiana's death row. When I met Paul through a friend, I asked him directly, "Are you in favor of the death penalty?" He responded, with a smile, "Eh, I'm Canadian," clearly feeling that was answer enough.
And it was, coming from the founder of our local chapter of Food Not Bombs and the front man for the Troublemakers (a band whose songs celebrate Emma Goldman and the idea of universal health care) in such a lighthearted tone that it would scarcely have alienated the most ardent conservative.
Helen Hill was Paul's perfect match – a kind and generous woman who made award-winning animated films and taught art and filmmaking to children, adults, anyone who was interested. She'd spent much of the last year restoring reels of 16-millimeter film on which she had drawn by hand, and which had been damaged when their house took 4 feet of water during Hurricane Katrina.
She had a new film under way, inspired by discarded hand-sewn dresses, made by an elderly New Orleanian, which Helen had found in the trash after the woman's death. The film interwove the story of the old woman and her dresses with Helen's own flood-torn life, which took her, Paul and Francis to Columbia, S.C. – Helen's hometown, where she will be buried today – for almost a year.
Helen had longed to return to New Orleans, despite Paul's concern that crime and potential hurricanes made it too dangerous for their family. So Helen campaigned, sending Paul's friends in New Orleans blank postcards, addressed to Paul, for us to write and mail to him. In mine, I pleaded with Paul – "We need you" – the way I do with anyone who is thinking about leaving, coming to, or even just visiting New Orleans. After what I am sure was a flood of similar cards, Paul relented.
I saw Paul and the baby a day after their return to the city, at a parade on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Francis had on a little railroad conductor's hat, a T-shirt depicting a cartoon love affair between red beans and rice, and a little sign pinned to his back, in Helen's hand: "New Orleans Native. I Got Back Yesterday!"
The day of the anniversary was solemn but optimistic. Everyone still had a can-do attitude. Paul, for one, could help make the city's people well and improve health care for the poor. Helen could make art depicting the city's life. Others could rebuild schools, demand better levees, reconstruct their homes. It still felt as if our grassroots efforts, along with some real help from a government finally forced to make good on its obligations, could create a more just, fair and safe city. It might have been naive, but it really seemed possible.
After wandering this beautiful, falling-over city the afternoon after Helen's murder, forcing myself to remember why I love it here so much, I came back to my garden and picked flowers, those hardy few that had weathered the recent cold. I put them in a vase, wrote out the verses to Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Dirge Without Music" – "I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground / So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind" – and drove to the couple's house, which my wife and I had recently visited for Helen's open studio. On the steps leading up to their old shotgun house I set down the poem and the vase, just feet from where Paul had been found by the police, shot, bleeding, holding his baby.
On the way home, I stopped at my neighborhood bar to try to eat something. A picture of Paul and Helen, followed by one of the baby, appeared on the television in the corner. Oh, my God. The bartender was kind. She asked me whether I knew them, and talked to me about her fears living with her new baby in a city with no functional schools, no real plan for redevelopment, and spotty or nonexistent basic services.
The mighty voice of the capitalist Bottom Line resorts to GOP frat-boy snarkiness while Americans die in an American city. From The Wall Street Journal's online Opinion Journal.com:Crescent Quagmire
The troops were supposed to be home by now, but instead, faced with increasing
violence, political leaders are planning a surge. Iraq? Nah, New Orleans. The Times-Picayune reports from Baton Rouge:They said New Orleans was supposed to be a cakewalk; some neocons even called it "the Big Easy." They sold us a bill of goods, promising the natives would greet us with beads and celebratory parades. Instead we got murder and mayhem. Cindy Sheehan was right: U.S. out of New Orleans!The state will temporarily deploy additional state troopers in the New Orleans area for the Carnival season but will not increase the 360 police
and National Guard troops that have been on duty in the city since a murderous crime wave began last summer, Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Tuesday.Blanco told reporters at an informal news conference after addressing the annual meeting of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, the state's largest business lobbying organization, that despite a rash of killings in the city in recent weeks, she will not order a long-term increase in the 60 troopers and 300 Guard troops assigned to New Orleans.
She said that she has asked State Police and National Guard officials to review the security needs of the city, but "right now we are keeping it at the same level. . . . For Mardi Gras, we normally will bulk up; I expect that will be the same this year." . . .
The 300 Guard forces and 60 troopers were supposed to be pulled out of the city by the end of 2006, but city officials asked that they remain and the state extended the tour of duty through June.
The Lord said, "Pay attention to what the dishonest judge says.
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Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them?
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I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"
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He then addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.
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"Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector.
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The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, 'O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity -- greedy, dishonest, adulterous -- or even like this tax collector.
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I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.'
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But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, 'O God, be merciful to me a sinner.'
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I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted."
The problem with America is that I'm linking to THIS on this blog. Even though it's because I WANT THEM TO GO AWAY.
I hear the shots.
During late night walks in my neighborhood, sometimes I hear the not-so-distant reports of gunfire.
I wait for the sirens and lights to come, but they don't. In the morning, I tear through the Metro section of this paper, looking for the news, but there isn't any.
It's like the tree falling in the woods, I guess. If no one is killed or injured, it didn't really happen.
It's only a statistic when a victim bites the asphalt, a piece of steel buried in his chest or leg or head.
Everyone I know hears the shots. They get muffled by the sound of fireworks this time of year, but soon the fireworks will stop. The gunshots will not.
My neighborhood is the quietest of them all. Safe, in a relative sense. Very relative.
Down in the 7th, the 8th and the 9th, it's part of the aural fabric of the darkness, rat-tat-tat, the deadly game played on street corners by the Children of the Night.
They play a game called Somebody Dies Tonight. Question is, will it be someone you know -- a doctor, an artist, a musician -- so you'll get all up in arms about it and march on City Hall? Or will it be another nameless, faceless child of the streets, a killer at 17, dead himself at 18?
Should we mourn them any less?
I did not tell my wife about the shots I sometimes hear on my walks until this weekend because I don't want to move away from New Orleans. This is neither the time nor the place to dwell on the many reasons I don't want to go. For the sake of argument, it's just a given.
But how close to my house do I allow the shots to come before I claim no mas? How many more friends and acquaintances will die stupidly in their cars and yards and doorways before I realize that I have become more afraid of and for my city than ever before and am bordering on a siege mentality?
I've written about this before -- the pervasive predatory element of New Orleans -- and truth to tell, I don't have anything new to contribute to the conversation. But then again, I can't sit here at my desk and write about anything else -- the Saints, the weather, the Road Home, trash collection, whatever -- without thinking that it's all kind of moot when the cloud of murder descends over the city.
Again. And again. And again. And again.
We rise up, we get mad, we yell about it at City Council meetings and preachers decry it from the pulpits and the cops get down and dirty for a few weeks and then . . .
And then?
Then it gets quiet, except for the gunshots at night that are trees falling in the woods and we wait until the cycle starts again and then we get all a-tizzy about it again and then rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat.
